


Amaranthine

by caprelloidea



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Language, Mentions of homelessness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5859601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprelloidea/pseuds/caprelloidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood.  Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities.  Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half.   In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a little idea, but it grew into a bit of a monster. It’s already completely finished, so I’ll be posting one part every day for the next five days. My eternal gratitude and devotion to seastarved for reading through my drafts, listening to me complain, and for that edit up there. Endless love and hugs to is-that-what-it-is and high-seas-swan (on tumblr) for reading through the final draft.

“Fifty years.”

Emma Swan recites this to herself – a macabre mantra, if she says so herself – as she stalks along the familiar, and well-worn wooded path, the faint light of evening drifting through what leaves remain on the ancient trees around her.

“I am fifty years old.”

Over and over again, tapping a disjointed rhythm against her thigh as she walks.  It’s late October in southwestern Ohio, and so she’s swimming in four layers, ready to shed them at the drop of a hat, should a warm breeze turn in from the southwest.  She works up a bit of a sweat, climbing a hill here, leaping a muddy stream there, and is seriously contemplating shucking her jacket and tossing it over the nearest bare tree limb when she makes a sharp turn…

She’d almost, _almost_ , forgotten how beautiful this meadow was.  Hidden by a jagged line of stark-white, ancient sycamores, it opens down a slope to an expansive patch of diaphanous, damn near _sparkling_ grass.  It billows in the light breeze, peppered by the remains of what, during the spring, had been tulips of every curious color and shape.

The flowers are no coincidence.  Her friends, _only_ friends – owners of the property, the small farm at the fore-end, and these sprawling woods that lay behind –  Mary Margaret and David Nolan, had planted them some years ago.  As more and more varieties were developed, Mary Margaret would go on the occasional wild spree, collecting the bulbs from every obscure greenhouse in the area, dragging Emma and David along with her.  As much as they both complain, it’s always a welcome break from working the farm during late spring, when they’re running back and forth between the co-op up the road, and the food pantry in Cincinnati proper. 

Storybrooke, they’re called, all of them.  Storybrooke Farm, Storybrooke Co-Op, Storybrooke Food Pantry.  It’s a little wistful for her tastes, if not a bit overbearing, the sort of blind optimism that bleeds out of every stupid little fairytale themed decoration.  Now that the summer help has gone home for the season, she feels like some nice, cynical peace and quiet is overdue.

However, that’s not why she’s here.

Emma pauses for a moment as she reaches a particularly foggy patch in the meadow, reaching down into her boot to pull out a folding knife.  There’s a lonely beech tree across the way, pitiful little thing struggling in the shade of two hulking white pines.  There are forty-nine marks in this tree.  Forty-nine uneven slash marks running upwards from the base of the trunk.  Mary Margaret, bless her plant-hugging soul, had side-eyed the hell out of her penchant for marring the bark of the sad little tree.

“Reminds me of me,” Emma had explained, defensively.

Mary Margaret seemed to understand, though she wouldn’t let Emma water the house plants whenever they were out of town.  As if she had some kind of terrible tree karma. 

Though, as she tilts her head and thumbs at the scars she’s left behind, she figures vengeful tree magic is the least of her worries.

Emma tries never to dwell on the reason that she’s fifty and looking like she’s fresh out of college.  Or on the reason that her best friends, who had had a brief taste of immortality before they ran into each other at a Home Depot, of all places, look a bit more weathered every day.  That after three summers of crashing in a little shed-turned-cottage a quarter mile or so from their farm house, she can read their laughter, their labor, their feverish devotion in the lines about their eyes, their mouths.

Nevermind that she can heal people with her touch.

She tries not to think about any of this as she tucks herself between two winding branches of the beech, as she watches the waning light angle up and out with the setting of the sun.

A damp chill has settled in her bones by the time she admits to herself that’s it’s quite literally _all_ she can think about.  So she pulls herself to her feet, hopping in place a bit, trying to shake a bit of feeling back into her toes.  Her knife is now damn near frozen to her fingers, so she reaches out, and drags it across the bark.

Emma likes to think she’s not sentimental.  But as the flesh of the tree curls and falls underneath the press of her blade, she wonders who she’s kidding.  _God_ , she’s standing in the middle of a meadow straight out of a storybook, near tears while she vandalizes a tree.  If that’s not the _definition_ of sentimental, she’ll eat every single one of her hats.

(She has eleven, for the record.)

Reality sets in as she tucks the knife back into her boots.  She doesn’t want to be caught in the forest after dark, so she turns, and heads back towards the farm, though not before muttering a quiet, broken,

“Happy birthday.”

* * *

Emma manages her way back to the Nolan’s farm just as the last light of day slinks over the horizon.  Something for which she’s grateful, as a chilling fog rolls in from the north just as she walks through the door.  She’s met with a blast of warm air, filled with all sorts of heavenly smells.

“Oh God,” she says as she walks through the hallway, shucking her over-layers on the bench, a chair, the floor even – she’ll be hearing about that later.  “Is that a roast?”

“Hey Emma,” Mary Margaret says, brightly.  She hardly looks up as she does, singularly focused on what she’d declared just that morning would be _a feast for royalty_.  “It’s got another twenty or thirty minutes.”

Emma tries not to look disappointed, she really does.  But she’s starving, and cold, and _pouting_ like a teenager as she flops on the nearest stool.

David appears from behind, holding a pastry box.  “Bear claw?  Got ‘em fresh from Granny’s like a half hour ago.”

“Oh my God, _yes_.”

David laughs as she nearly knocks the box out of his hand as she reaches into it.

“You went all the way into the city for these?” Emma asks.

David looks sheepish, dropping the box on the counter before rubbing the back of his neck.  “Well, I needed some new drill bits anyway.”

“David Nolan,” Mary Margaret says, stepping around the both of them as she rushes around the kitchen.  Emma knows better than to get in her way – principally because the mere _thought_ of helping out seems to burn things – so she presses against the counter as Mary Margaret finishes, “You are a lying liar.”  She turns to Emma as she stirs an outrageous pot of who knows what.  “What he means is ‘happy birthday’ and ‘I love you’.”

Emma laughs.  “I love you too, _Dad._ ”

David ruffles her hair, placing a kiss on her forehead.  “Honey, I’m so glad we decided to have a kid ten years before we were born.”

Emma hums, shaking her head with a smile as she noshes on her treat.  She spends several silent minutes simply watching her friends – her _so fucking married oh my God_ friends – as they dance around one another in the kitchen.  Mary Margaret has the radio on at a low volume in the corner.  On a classic rock station, as far as Emma can tell.  The muted chords of some ballad or another blend all the sights and smells into a pleasant blur.

“So,” David breaks the silence with a tap on her shoulder, nearly startling Emma out of her stool.  “Did you have fun killing trees in the woods?”

“David,” Emma grouses good-naturedly.  “It’s possible you’re the rudest person on the planet.”

Mary Margaret laughs, then adds, “Did you, though?”

“Ugh, _yes_.  Happy birthday to me.  Fifty of who knows how many.

David and Mary Margaret both stop what they’re doing, having a silent conversation with their eyes as they step around one another.  They’re almost annoyingly understanding.  They had, after all, experienced about a decade of agelessness before fate brought them together in a search for cheap power tools.

“Oh, Emma,” Mary Margaret says.  “You’ll find your soulmate.  You don’t look a day older, and you can still heal, so we know they’re out there somewhere.  Otherwise…”

 _Otherwise, whoever it is fucking_ died.

Emma rolls her eyes, the optimism a bit too much to bear when she’s determined to indulge her mood, at least until dinner is ready.

“Sure, sure,” she grumbles.

Mary Margaret reaches out, patting Emma on the shoulder.  With anyone else, she imagines it would be condescending.  But Mary Margaret has a heart of gold, so it’s a small comfort.  Even still, Emma can’t bring herself to look her in the eye, stubbornly pulling bits off of her bear claw and stuffing them in her mouth as she bores a hole in the soapstone counter with her gaze.

Despite her mood, the rest of the evening passes in the sort of joyous haze that Emma only _dreamed_ of in her years bouncing around in foster care.  It’s been three years, but she’s determined not to take it for granted.  She can’t say she doesn’t cry when David brings out a lopsided cake he’d made himself, or when he tries to get her laughing with over-the-hill jokes while Mary Margaret whacks him on the back of the head.

It’s not family, not exactly, but it’s something like it, something better even.  And so thoughts of soulmates and eternity and loneliness drain from her mind as she falls asleep in the recliner to the gentle clanging of pots and pans, her heart – _damn David and his cheesy lines from his cheesy Hallmark movies_ – nearly as full as her stomach.

* * *

Emma’s up early the next morning, as she always is on Mondays – Mondays and Wednesdays both, in fact, as she’d volunteered to run the food pantry a couple days a week several months ago.  David, bless him, is waiting in the kitchen with coffee, though he still has pillow creases on his face, and the look of a sugar coma about him as he shuffles around.  Mary Margaret is already skittering around in the fields out back, he tells her, relaying her usual message of _stay safe, text me when you get there, don’t drink too much hot chocolate at Granny’s you’ll get sick_.

Emma just smiles in reply, shaking her head as David helps her load several crates of apples and late fall vegetables into the truck.  They work in a gruff silence, neither of them awake just yet, despite the caffeine boost.  Once they’re finished, he bids her farewell with a familiar pat on her back as she hops up into the truck.

The drive into Cincinnati is heinous, as per usual, fraught with mysterious backups and patches of rain.  Typically, she blasts the radio.  But she’s still feeling a bit melancholy, certain she’s at least earned the right to dwell on the current circumstances of her life for at least as many hours as years she’s lived.  Besides, the city as a whole seems to be having one of those days, an ache blooming at the small of her back and jolting up her spine as she drives.

It’s not only that she can heal.  She can _feel_ hurt as well.  Something about sickness, illness, death even, it calls to her.  A siren song.  Dangerously alluring, pleasurable pain that crawls along the inside of her skull.  Nearest the city center, it’s almost unbearable.  At the pantry, at least, she can slip through the cracks.

“Alright, Swan, get a grip,” she tells herself as she finally – _finally_ – pulls into the alley behind the pantry.  Between her birthday, the gloomy weather, and the funk she’d settled into in the meadow yesterday evening, she’s just about over herself.  And so, as she unloads the crates in through the back door, she surrenders to routine.

* * *

Killian Jones wanders the soggy streets and alleyways of Cincinnati on a rainy afternoon in late October.  His hands – real and prosthetic alike – are stuffed in his pockets, black leather gloves buckled to the sleeves of his black leather jacket.  His vest, too, is leather, buttoned neatly over a thin, durable, shirt that stretches up his throat, nearly up to his chin.  He’s found the combination – the layers, the buckles, the zippers, and the gloves especially – protect against any…accidents.  It’s been many years since he was careless enough to touch someone without a substantial barrier.  Since he was foolish enough to believe that he could slip away, as if one could forget a man who kills those he touches.  

Nevertheless, he’s not immune to the occasional bout of clumsiness, and he’s not about to take any unnecessary chances, particularly when he falls a bit too deep into the rum.  Hence the armor.

As he walks, he breathes deep, sorely missing the smell of salt in the air.  He’s arrived just a week ago from a two-month stint in a small town just northeast of Boston.  The beaches were prim and the harbors were well-ordered.  Though, the traffic was murder, the tourists tended to grate on his nerves, and the alcohol was outrageously overpriced.  The life of a vagabond in such a place is unsustainable.  The seaside residents of New England are viciously protective, and he’d begun to see too much suspicious recognition in their eyes as he roamed.

And so he left.  As he does.  Oh, he could have stretched it out for at least a few months longer, but it feels good to be capricious, after so many years as Gold’s puppet, caught in the demon’s formidable strings.  Helpless to do his bidding, slave to the compelling lilt of his voice, just like all the others.

Now free, though short a hand, he tends to leap when least expected, run when nothing’s chasing him.  Then settle, until the urge bubbles up once more.

This is his vicious cycle.

Killian likes to think it’s not quite as terrible as it must sound.  Often the centuries he’s endured feel like nothing but a series of moments.  The years fold in on one another, like an oversized road map, and the decades between one event and another are reduced to a blink, a turn of the page.  He fills them with beautiful things, beautiful scenery, sculptures, paintings, miles and miles of endless sea…all as he pilfers, pickpockets, and otherwise pirates his way across the world.

Though, sometimes, the time weighs and stretches, and the burden is nigh unbearable.  A decade can seem a millennium – even one day can feel like the rise and fall of empires between the rising and the setting of the sun.  He longs to feel sand beneath his feet, the brine of saltwater between his toes, quiet evenings along the harbor, _any_ harbor – the ships a bittersweet reminder of the life he would have happily died for. 

But something, an itch deep under his skin, had pulled him away.  He’d turned westward, on a whim – bus stop to bus stop, train to train on occasion – until he’d stopped in Cincinnati, The Queen City.  He’d meant to move along, jump a train towards the Pacific.  But he’d spotted the river out the window on the last bus he’d taken, shimmering in the moonlight, the city lights twinkling on the horizon.  So he’d stayed, weak to the site of a full moon on the current.

He can’t say he regrets it.  It’s nothing like the coast.  There’s a thick, still humidity in the air, sifting through his hair, the strands hanging limp against his forehead.  It’s nearly six in the morning, and yet the streets feel empty, tired, peaceful even, at least by comparison.  He quite likes it.  And while the river is hardly the Atlantic, the familiar smell of water and exhaust makes him feel lighter.  Enough to grin disarmingly at the occasional passer-by, delighting in their expressions – ranging from cowed to lecherous – as he rifles neatly in their pockets. 

Come seven, he has more than enough cash for a decent meal.  But, he’s found, money is better hoarded for a rainy day.  This city is flush with food pantries, which, in his experience, tend not to ask questions. 

In fact, there’s one in particular…

On his first visit to this pantry the Monday before, it had been late in the afternoon, and something about the sign hanging above the door –

“Storybrooke Food Pantry,” he’d read aloud, rolling his eyes at the pastoral scene behind the lettering.  “How quaint.”

– had caught his eye, drawing him in.  He’d nearly left the moment he’d walked in, the tight space and warm bodies sending him into a bit of a panic.

That is, before he saw her.

 _Emma_. 

That was her name, overheard as an older gentlemen prattled on about something or other.  Words lost to the fall of her hair against her shoulders, to the emeralds peeking out from beneath her lashes.

_Emma Swan._

It was all he’d managed to learn before another person had walked in, the bell above the door driving him out of his hypnosis.  He’d been less than an arm’s length away from a young woman, he’d realized, and he’d startled towards the door, though not before snatching an apple.

He’d spent the remainder of the afternoon in a library just up the street, turning her name over and over again on his tongue.

Now, days later, he stands on the steps of the Storybrooke Food Pantry once more.  He’d taken note of the hours last week, hoping to catch her outside of the rush.  To just look at her, to listen to the sound of her voice, to remember what it’s like to talk to someone.  He almost hopes she guesses his secret, has had a dozen conversations with her in his mind where she does, a dozen more where she doesn’t.  Then, he convinces himself, _then_ he can forget her, run back to the sea, shake her like sand from his boots.

(Leave her before she can leave him – one way or another.)

Anticipation curls in his belly.  He fiddles with the buckles holding his prosthesis in place, pops his collar to hide the back of his neck, pulls at the neck of his shirt.  Then, with a deep breath, he walks up the stairs, boots thudding heavy against the landing, and pushes open the door.

* * *

It’s seven in the morning on a Monday.  This alone puts Emma in a mood.  She’s arranged the crates on the shelves, placed the appropriate labels, and turned the ‘Closed’ sign over to ‘Open’.  She’s shuffled around the room, half in a daze as enough calories to keep her going for the rest of the week still sit heavy in her stomach.  She’s almost looking forward to having someone to talk to, if only to distract her from the overwhelming urge to curl in the corner and nap until the uneven floorboards press permanent creases into her face.

But it’s _seven_ in the _morning_ on a _Monday_.

She hardly expects any foot traffic this early.  So she’s playing Solitaire – actual, cards-everywhere (missing an ace, _Goddamit_ ) Solitaire – and texting back and forth with Mary Margaret about how she’s _not_ going to some obnoxious Halloween party in the city this weekend, thank you very much.

She’s surprised when the bell above the door chimes.  It’s a stupidly shrill little brass thing, something David had hung up while pretending he didn’t think it was the coolest thing ever.  The door slams shut with a _whoosh_ and another tinny clang and oh _God_ , it’s _him_ again.

Emma had noticed him the second he’d walked in just last Wednesday.  All sorts of people at all sorts of points in their lives come wandering through the Storybrooke Food Pantry.

But this man, he’s like a _study_ in beautiful juxtaposition.  As he was before, he’s clothed head to toe in black leather and cotton, dark and purposeful.  Even his hands are covered.  The angles of his shoulders, of his face, they’re severe, but offset by dark hair that she’s tempted to describe as _fluffy_ , falling into his eyes, flipping out at his ears, over the long neck of his shirt.  There’s something terribly earnest about his expression, color high on his cheeks, eyelashes curling against his cheeks as he stares resolutely at the floorboards.

Her fingers itch with urge to reach out and touch him.  She bites down on her tongue, glances back down at her game.  But she can’t help but to look back up.  She wants to stare at him forever.

(She wants to run away and never look back.)

He seems as though he’s about to make for the shelves in the back, eyes down, hand rubbing at the back of his neck.  But then he meets her eyes, a crystal blue glinting sharply underneath the muted, yellow factory lights.  She’s holding a nine of spades in her hand and she nearly drops it.

He walks towards her, slowly.  In fact, Emma’s sure that time itself begins to unwind, that decades are rolling over and over again in the space between them as he crosses the wooden floor.  Each step is a resounding _thud_.  And something about the way he’s looking at her – like he’s reading every notch in that damn tree in the meadow each time his eyes flit from one of hers to the other – it stills her breath.

When he does reach her, she chokes on a sigh, covering with an awkward cough.

“Can I help you?” she says.

He tilts his head, looking down at her game of Solitaire for a few moments before looking back up at her.

“Can I help _you_?” he counters.  And oh God, his _voice_ , honeyed and accented, a delightfully rough scrape against her ears.  “You appear to be missing an ace.”

Emma laughs, loudly.  She laughs because it’s absurd.  She’s just had the most intense staring contest in the history of the human race, and suddenly they’re talking small over a game of cards.  He seems a bit taken aback, but then he smiles, and her breath hitches in her chest.

“Might I suggest a replacement?” he says.  “A post-it perhaps?”

She scoffs.  “Why?  Game’s more interesting this way.”

He quirks a brow, teeth peeking out from behind his lips as he tilts his head.  “Aren’t you a stubborn lass.”

Emma makes a disbelieving noise.  Not because of his brashness – although she’s one comment away from flipping him off – but because of the curiosity that colors his tone.  Like she’s a puzzle.  Like, in the minutes that have passed, he’s taken in the sight of the walls she’s built around herself over the past several decades, and has _already_ begun surveying them for gaps.

It’s unsettling.  As is the way his stare is boring into her.  Dragging heavily over her face even as he holds this lighthearted, completely ridiculous, non-conversation with her.

“Whatever,” she says, clearing her throat.  “I just cheat anyway.”

He tuts good-naturedly.  “Bad form, love.  You’re only cheating yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s the point.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but is cut short by the dinging of the bell above the door.  The guy – fuck, she doesn’t even know his _name_ – steps aside.  And she can’t help but notice that – where, seconds ago, he’d stood tall, arms hanging loosely, feet apart – now he shuffles away, _meek_ almost.  He shoves his hands into his pockets, shrinking at least an inch or two as he tucks his chin into his chest.  It’s a complete one-eighty, and it has Emma reeling.

At least until Granny Lucas walks over with two hot chocolates.

“There you are, young lady,” she says, plopping the to-go cups on the counter before crossing her arms over her chest.  “Missed you at the diner this morning.”

Emma wants to gripe at the phrase _young lady_ , but Nameless Brooding Guy is still in the pantry, having wandered towards the back.  Granny may know her secrets, and Emma knows rumors about her abound, but there’s no sense in shouting it from the rooftops. 

“Yeah,” Emma says.  “Still in a food coma from dinner last night.  David and Mary Margaret cooked enough food to stuff a city block.”

Granny’s reproachful expression fades, and she smiles, reaching out to pat Emma on the shoulder.

“Well, that’s why I’m here.  Closing early for the day, but I didn’t want to miss you the day after your birthday.”

Emma blushes, still nonplussed by the random acts of kindness sort, even after three years of living with the Nolans, paragons of virtue.

“Thank you,” Emma says, picking at an imaginary thread on her sweater.

“Happy birthday, dear.”

Emma smiles, looks up, about to reply when she notices an angry red burn mark on Granny’s forearm.  Not that this is unusual in and of itself.  Working long, oftentimes frantic hours in a diner, there are bound to be accidents.  All of which she’s taken to healing over the past couple of years.  And yet,

“Didn’t I…” Emma glances over at Leather and Eyeliner before she leans forward, finishing on a whisper.  “Didn’t I heal that?”

Granny hums.  “Thought so.  Must have been an off day.” 

“Right…”  Emma trails off, her breath stuttering.  She reassures herself – _it’s fine, probably just forgot, it’s fine_ – and reaches out, taking hold of Granny’s hand, watching as the burn shrinks a bit…

But it doesn’t fade.

“Off day number two, looks like,” Granny says, though she’s eyeing her suspiciously. 

_Oh God._

Suddenly, Emma’s stomach lurches.  She can feel sweat breaking out on her palms.  The distant noise of traffic outside the door ratchets up to a roar in her ears.

Everyone knows how it goes.  _Everyone_.  One in ten thousand even _have_ a soulmate.  Not even one in a hundred of those have any abilities whatsoever.  The downside is public contempt.  The upside – depending on who you ask, of course – is that, when they get close for long enough, the power fades.  So when they’re nearby, you know.

You _know_.

_Oh God, oh God._

Emma attempts to disguise the fact that she’s one grating noise from a full blown panic attack by taking a measured sip from the hot chocolate.  It burns her tongue, but it grounds her.

“Thanks,” Emma says, quietly.  “For the hot chocolate, I mean.  But I really ought to get to work.  We’re super busy today.”

_Get the hell out of here so I can have an episode in peace._

Granny hums once more, looking around at the shop, then down at her game of cards.  But she doesn’t protest.  She walks towards the door, though she pauses with her hand on the handle, and looks over at Adorably Scruffy.  Then, because Granny never could resist,

“Maybe this tall drink of water over here can help you.”

Then she’s gone and _fuck_ , Dark and Handsome is still being weird in the corner, though he loosens and saunters over as the last echoes of the bell above the door fade.  He leans over the counter, smiling down at her.  He’s close enough that she can hear his intake of breath, can hear the sound of his tongue sliding over his teeth as he prepares to speak.  Emma’s desperately trying to find a diplomatic way to tell him to leave before she throws up.  She opens her mouth, ready to talk over him if she has to, when a spastic movement of her hand pitches one of her hot chocolates forward, and all over the leather stretched over his hand.

“Shit.” 

* * *

Killian’s disappointed, to say the least, when the older woman – clearly a close friend, perhaps a family member – interrupts their conversation.  Not that they were saying much of anything.  But he’s found it’s much more difficult to keep track of two people than one, so he backs away, extricating himself before he can make a shrinking fool of himself.  It’s hardly commonplace, but more than once has someone reached out to pat at his cheek, or flick at his ear, only to be met with a shock that ultimately drives him out of town.

Nonetheless, the warmth between the angel before him and the elder woman has a smile flitting over his face, and growing to a smirk when the latter of the two eyes him from head to toe,

“Maybe this tall drink of water over here can help you.”

He smiles, genuinely amused, and winks in reply.  The door shuts behind her, and he breathes out a sigh, pulling his hands out of his pockets, and standing up straight.  He’s found the posture is off-putting at best.  But the siren at the counter wears a guarded – if not frantic – expression, so he forces an easy swagger into his step as he closes the distance between them once more.

He means to ask her name, his right hand turned up and open in what he hopes is an encouraging gesture.  A gentle plea, to ease her as she fidgets.  He smiles, and inhales. 

But before he can speak, her hand twitches, knocking her hot chocolate all over the counter, and all over him, as it were.

“Shit,” she says.  Then, again, looking so devastated at the loss of her drink that he can’t help but smile,  “ _Shit_ , I’m sorry.”

He laughs.  “No problem, love.  Worse things – ”

She reaches forward, suddenly, taking hold of his hand, which startles the rest of his sentence straight off his tongue.  He means to pull back, he really does, can hear his mind screaming at him to run.  But he’s frozen, staring at her fingers as they slide against the wet leather.  And before he can come to his senses, they slip around the buckles by his wrist, and through the gap between his glove and the cuff of his jacket.

The press of her skin against his is a shock itself.  It’s been years since he’d intentionally touched another, even longer since he’d _un_ intentionally allowed another to touch him.  Each person – they are all unique, a particular feeling, a chorus of memory and hope and yearning that buzzes over his skull as he drains the life out of them.

But with her…nothing.

_Nothing._

He’s frozen once more, and by the looks of it, so is she.  What she’s feeling, he hasn’t an inkling.  But the longer they touch, the more it becomes painfully obvious. 

It’s not working.

His knees threaten to give out.  He has to remind himself to breathe.  Emma pulls back, expression flickering from curiosity to concern as he backs away, nearly falling over a wooden crate.

“Wait,” Emma says, pushing back from the counter, hopping off the stool. 

His heart is beating painfully in his chest.  The walls around him press inward.  Many lifetimes of experience have taught him the subtle differences between cowardice and raw self-preservation.  But never before has he felt such overwhelming fear. 

Thus, he’s not certain which is winning out as he turns, and runs.

* * *

During her mid-twenties, Emma had had a three-year stint as a bail bondsperson in New York.  It was by no means glamorous, but it afforded her a slew of useful, if not random skills.  One of these being that she can run at impressive speeds in impractical shoes.  Her boots are trusty, but flat in the heel.

Still, as he turns sharply at the street corner, then again in an alley, she nearly loses him.

“Wait!” she shouts, repeatedly.  She wishes she at least knew this guy’s _name_ as she runs after him – _like an idiot, what am I even_ doing – leaving all sorts of vile cursing in her wake as she comes close to knocking at least six people over.

But now she’s committed, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t at _least_ punch him in the face for starting this in the first place.

Although, that would mean touching him again.  And as warm as the skin of his wrist had felt against her fingers, there had been something unnerving about it.  A gentle buzzing that had vibrated all the way up her arm.  Not entirely unpleasant, but certainly unexpected.  And judging by the expression he’d worn – fear and shock, anger and loathing, all flitting across his face as he’d backed away – he’d not been expecting it either.

Also not expecting _her_ as she _finally_ catches up to him.  It’s probably unnecessary, the force with which she throws them both to the ground.  But she’s pissed as hell, and even as they skid through a puddle, she can’t help but think it was worth it.

“Bloody hell, woman,” he says. 

He groans as he picks himself up off the ground.  Half of his hair is wet, sticking up at all angles, droplets falling from his chin as he straightens his jacket.  He’s still cagey, shifting from foot to foot, stepping carefully around her, but the open air seems to calm him a bit.  There had been warmth in his eyes before.  Guarded, but open enough that she could see a kind soul peeking forth.  She’s seen enough stereotypes with actual hearts of gold to know the difference.

But now, his eyes are steel.  The blue dulls, a cold grey overtaking as he looks at her from underneath his lashes.  He’s throwing up monumental walls even as they carefully regard one another.  And Emma…

Well, she can respect that.  She’s doing the same thing.  The world is fucked.  Still, though,

“Why the hell did you run?”

He grits his teeth.  “I hardly – ”

“ _Why_ the _hell_ did you run?  And, God, who even _are_ you?”

Fear appears to melt away, and he stands tall, scowling.  “I _hardly_ think you would understand.”

Emma scoffs.

“And besides,” he adds.  “Why did _you_ give chase?”

“Oh no.  Don’t turn this around on me.  You can’t lurk around in my pantry, steal my apples – yeah, I saw that, I’m not _stupid_ – run off, and not expect me to chase you.  If nothing else, you owe me a hot chocolate.”

His face seems to run the gamut of emotions, but it settles on fatuous amusement.  _Another wall_.

“And I believe _you_ owe me a new set of leathers, love.”

Is _she_ this frustrating when she’s deflecting?  Emma decides she’s had enough.  She’d felt the jolt when her skin met his, and she suspects that’s what threw him so off kilter.

So she reaches for him again, for his hand.  Her movements are slow, calculated, as she looks, unblinking, up into his eyes, which are hooded with fear and mistrust once more.  She figures he has every right to wrench it away, and that’s what she expects. 

And yet, as she closes the distance between them, he clenches and unclenches his fist at his side, but he does not pull away.  He watches her, expression now _beyond_ unreadable, something harrowed and untold in his eyes as he allows her fingers to glide over the leather, slick yet with remnants of hot chocolate, whipped cream, and dashes of cinnamon.  He does pull away after a moment, but only to reach up, and to pull the glove off with his teeth.

This is when she notices it, the stiffness in his other hand, the way the fingers are pressed together, and the curious way the leather stretches over it, puffing up at the knuckles.  It’s a _prosthetic_ , she realizes, with some shock.

The thought falls away – _all_ thought falls away – when she feels his fingers brushing against the skin of her cheek.  She looks up at him and his mouth falls open, a strangled gasp escaping his lips as he moves from her cheek to her jaw, there to her chin, back up again.

Emma can hardly believe herself.  Allowing his hand to stroke the contours of her face, seemingly of its own accord as he watches her with something like awe.  But his skin is warm, and – she notes with no small amount of awe herself – that she’s _already_ addicted.  He stares into her eyes, a deep cobalt that drags her headfirst into another world entirely.  And, though she was roiling in anger and frustration just moments ago, the possibilities dance behind her eyes.  Possibilities born of the fact that, the longer he touches her – fingers now dancing along the shell of her ear – the more the voices fade.  The atonal chorus of pain that echoes in the city streets, that calls to her morning to night – it _fades_.  And though she feels she knows who he is, really _knows_ , she can’t help but ask, quietly,

“Who are you?” 

He hesitates, fingers stilling just beneath her lips.  But he seems just as enraptured as she, lost in the way her hair is tangling around his thumb.  She feels like this is what compels him to answer.

“Killian Jones,” he says.  It catches on his voice, and she can feel his fingers trembling against her cheek.  His touch is feather-light, barely there, a whisper on her skin.

“Emma,” she says.  And it’s all she means to say.  But then she adds, impulsively, “Swan.”

“Swan,” he repeats.  Then, softer, “ _Emma_.  Just let me run, love.  If only for a while – ”

She opens her mouth to protest – if anyone runs, it’s _her_.  But, God, she at least wants to know him before she does.  To know why he tucks his tongue in his cheek as he tilts his head, to know why he curls his pinky around a lock of her hair as he thumbs at the dent in her chin, to know _why_ she feels like she’s stepping out and into the light of day for the first time in decades.  _Decades._

But then, as suddenly as it seems this all began, it all shatters with the sound of a loud boom.  A backfire, a bullet, it’s hard to say.  It’s a bit distant, perhaps a half block away, but this man – _Killian_ – drops his hand from her face as she turns on instinct.  And when she turns back, he’s gone.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood. Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities. Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half. In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that read and/or reviewed Part One! I will love you forever. As ever, my devotion and gratitude to seastarved, is-that-what-it-is, and high-seas-swan (all on tumblr) for their help and encouragement with this fic.

_Just let me run, love._

Killian Jones desperately aches to give Killian _fucking_ Jones a right punch to the gut.  But he knows that, dressed head to toe in black leather, and wearing the cold expression he’s learned to set on his face, he’d rightly attract attention

So, after slipping around the corner at Emma’s – _oh God,_ Emma – distraction, he gravitates towards the river instead, intent on purging the devil in his thoughts with the sound of the wild, running water.

It had occurred to him, centuries ago, once it became clear he wasn’t a bloody _demon_ , that his other half must be walking around out there somewhere.  His life is a blur of empty pleasure.  He’s seen hulking mountains and hidden villages, admired every piece of art under the sun.  He’s likely commandeered every bloody tall ship there is, just for the hell of it.  Yet…he’s wondered before if the promise of death would drag it all into a different light.  After all, there is no sunset without the horizon.

It’s Emma.  He _knows_ it’s her.  He’s never been so certain of anything, so _un_ certain about what he intends to do about it.

Killian descends a flight of stone stairs to the shore of the river, stepping lightly as his shoes sink into the sand and the mud.  As he walks, one careful step at a time, he wonders if Emma Swan feels the same way.  If she knows, if she recognized him the way he did her, as if she were from a dream.  He longs to know everything about her, every trivial detail.  How long has she lived?  What has she seen?  Why does the sticky residue on his glove smell like cinnamon? 

He wants to stay, _yearns_ to stay.  But does he have the right to ask her to give up her immortality?  Does he want to?  Fate has written his story for centuries now.  He’s resisted for so long, pushing everyone away in the hopes that they’ll never get close enough to know.  That he is a walking, talking pestilence.

Killian stops as he reaches a dam, the concrete locks casting him in shadows.  The rushing water is a roar in his ears, drowning out the sound of passing cars over the hill.  There is a breeze blowing aft, throwing flecks of water over his skin and his clothes.  He stops, allows the droplets to trail over his skin, to soak into his shirt.  A stray current washes over his feet, and the shock of cold helps to put it all in perspective.

The fact is, if he remains in proximity with her, she will die, eventually, as will he.  And if she possesses any abilities, those too will fade.  Before today, he’d imagined he would jump at the chance to live a life that’s not plagued with unending uncertainty…

Life forevermore, the cool touch of death – it’s a power none should have, and one he’s taken great care not to use for hundreds of years.  Yet he shrinks at the prospect of letting it go.

He’s such a bloody fucking _coward_.

He remains by the dam until he’s nearly soaked to the bone, until the sun drops below the trees and the stars begin to peek out.  The lights from the city-scape leak down into the water, winking against the current. 

Water, he thinks, is simplicity.  Water is movement.  It is a physical force, driven only by the turning of the Earth.

Killian holds onto this as he makes his way back through the city, the feel of Emma’s skin under his hands still searing into his mind.

* * *

It’s just past eight o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, nearly a week since _The Incident_.  It’s nearly November, so it’s long since been dark.  Emma had closed up shop promptly at five.  But she couldn’t quite bring herself to drive back to the farm just yet, thoughts of the annoyingly mysterious Killian Jones weighing on her mind.  So she’s taken to wandering the streets, hoping the bustle of an urban atmosphere will help her think of, _God_ , literally anything else.

If anything, though, it only serves to cement him at the forefront of her mind.  As she walks past Fountain Square, she thinks the bluish lights flickering behind the fountain are not unlike Killian Jones’ eyes.

As she wanders through a waterfront park, she thinks the curiously warm breeze off the Ohio River is not unlike the press of Killian Jones’ fingers against her cheeks.

Emma can’t even begin to count the number of times she’s considered tracking him down.  She’s been on the down and outs, she’s done the occasional questionably legal odd job.  She has skills, assets, even a contact here and there.  Out of context, she wouldn’t hesitate to use them all to find him.  But she’s stuck on the morality of taking the choice away from her…

“Soulmate,” she whispers.  It sounds different out loud.  Like a curse.  The curse of immortality, of power.

She groans, frustrated.  Her power would disappear too, clearly already on its way.  Does she really have the right to give it up?  Hundreds of lives, she’s saved.  Hundreds, _thousands_ more could be waiting.  And him, what could he do?  Nothing, most likely, but if he could, would he be willing to give that up as well?  Whatever it is?  He could turn spiders into puppies, for all she knows.

Her phone startles her out of her thoughts, thank God.  She wiggles the damn thing out of her pocket.  It’s David.  She answers, barely managing a “Hello.” before he speaks. 

“Yeah, Mary Margaret is trying to pretend she’s not worried about where you are.”

Emma sighs.  “She building something or cleaning?”

“Cleaning, this time.  Literally everything.  She’s going to vacuum me if you don’t come home soon.”

She laughs.  “Give me an hour, alright?  I took a walk.”

“In the dark?  Emma, how could you do this to me.  She’s gonna replace the gutters again.  Or renovate your house.”

“Chill, okay?  One hour, tops.  Tell her I’m doing inventory or something.”

David scoffs.  “Inventory?  You’re worse at lying than Mary Margaret is at keeping secrets.  She won’t believe me.  I think I hear the gutters coming down already.”

Laughing again, harder now, “ _Bye_ , David.”

Emma can hear him sighing repeatedly even as she hangs up.  She gives the city skyline one last, long look before she heads back towards the pantry, up Elm this time.  She flits through a few alleys.  Her feet are starting to ache, and even though Cincinnati is relatively sleepy – compared to, say, New York – she has approximately _zero_ patience for the mid-evening bar crowd today.

She’s about a half mile from her car, sidestepping a ruddy little puddle when she hears it, and she’s already dreading Mary Margaret’s frenzied _I told you so._

“Evening, darlin’.”

Whoever the hell this guy is, he’s neither especially tall, nor especially muscular.  He seems benign at first glance, but there’s something in his eyes that gives Emma pause.  Something…dazed almost, like he’s not quite looking at her.  She’s got a knife in her boot and a mean right hook.  She’s not over-worried, more annoyed than anything else, but she still opts for caution, feet spread apart as she rolls her eyes.

“Fuck off.”

This usually sets these sorts of idiots off.  But this guy, he just grins wickedly as he says, “Heard talk you’re an immortal.”

_Oh shit._

“Seriously?  Would you just fuck _off_ already?”

About to Die guy ignores her, slinking towards her as he looks her up and down.  He’s a few feet away when he speaks again –

“Now, why – ”

– and when Emma punches him square in the nose.  There’s a sickening crack, and immediately blood starts flowing, along with an entirely uncreative string of curses.  He seems shaken, and his eyes focus on hers, and he looks confused for a moment before he shudders, and the same vapid expression falls over his face.

“Told you,” she says, but it lacks satisfaction.  Honestly, the guy is creeping her out.  His nose is gushing, but he suddenly appears unaffected.  So she makes to run off.

She’s hardly taken a step, though, when someone else leaps on her from behind.  Instincts kick in, and she angles sideways, pushing against the pavement with her boots, bashing Seriously Dead into the brick.  His grip loosens, and she jams an elbow into his ribcage.  He lets go, but About to Die is kicking again.  She uses the lull to yank her knife out of her boot, set to scare these morons off once and for all, when she hears a strangled gasp from behind.

Before she even turns – it’s like she knows.  Her blood roils up in her veins, an oddly pleasant _whoosh_ in her ears that sets a flush down her face, her neck, her chest.  And when she _does_ face him, she almost says it out loud.

_Killian Jones._

Only now, in lieu of the awe she’d seen on his face just a week prior, there is nothing but rage.  Unbridled, terrible, a sinister curl to his lips, his eyes shining and black.  _Literally_ About to Die is frozen in place, clearly unsure.  Seriously Dead is already struggling to his feet, but he falters, back on his face with a hideously audible _smack_.

Killian seems to move in slow motion at first, lips stretching over his teeth against a terrible grin.  But then he rushes forward, wry, almost impossibly fast, graceful on the tip of his toes.  He reaches About to Die in what has to be two seconds flat.  Emma’s sure the bastard’s in for another swift punch to the face, but instead, Killian gently, almost _reverently_ , places his bare fingers against the man’s throat.

_What the hell…_

After which the guy drops to the ground, another gasp echoing along the pavement.  For several long moments, the two idiots scramble to get up, choking against some kind of unseen pain as they finally scramble off, twin expressions of confusion on their faces as they stumble quietly in opposite directions. 

Emma isn’t in great shape either.  She’s dealt with all sorts of scum.  But her days as a bail bondsperson are far behind her.  She’s punched a handful of assholes in the nose since she came to live here.  But this attack was personal and _fuck_ , were there more where they came from?  The thought alone has her heart racing.  The cold, damp November air sets her chest aching.  She leans forward, grasping her knees.  Her fingers are trembling, and so are her legs, she realizes, as she stumbles gracelessly into the building beside her.  The rough texture of the exterior is a godsend, really, and she turns her head, pressing her cheek into the chilled brick.  It steadies her in the face of…of whatever the _fuck_ is going on.

“Easy, love,” Killian says.

His voice startles her.  Which is ridiculous because she _knows_ he’s standing there.  But she’s living on a knife’s edge, and she feels she may very well teeter if she doesn’t just _breathe_ already.

“Easy,” he repeats, whispering now.  Emma looks up to find him reaching for her.  But he hesitates, hand quivering in the space between them.  For a moment, she considers reaching back, grasping his hand, and just putting it on her.  She’s never felt quite so alive as when his nervous fingers were burning a path along her jaw just days before, and Goddammit, she _wants_ him.  Wants to grab hold of him, shuck off the rage and fill it with the gentle burn of his touch. 

So – _fuck it_ – she _does_ reach for him, despite the rational screams of protest echoing in the back of her mind, and grasps the lapels of his jacket.  And she means to just bring him closer, she really does.  To just breathe him in.  But he stumbles, and she can feel his breath, hot and damp, fanning over her face, can feel his thigh pressing into hers, heat seeping through the layers and down into her skin.

She’s kissing him before she can consider whether or not she should.  She’ll just blame the adrenaline, when she wonders what she could _possibly_ have been thinking.  But now, in the collision of the heat and the cold of this moment, Emma can feel him grunt against her mouth, can feel it on her tongue, in her teeth.  At first, it seems as though he’s about to pull away.  But then he lets out a strangled noise, not unlike a sob, and falls into her.

Emma’s kissed before, but this is something entirely different.  Just as his mouth slants over hers, as her tongue drags over his teeth, as his bottom lip slides down towards her chin, so too do their bodies rise and fall.  They sway one way and then the other, undulating against the wall.  His knee slips between hers, and she grinds down onto it, entirely too enraptured with the feel of his stubbled cheeks against her throat to be embarrassed at the noise she makes, as it reverberates down the alley.

“ _Killian_ ,” she gasps, just as his mouth finds hers once more.  He doesn’t kiss her, though, not really, just nudges his lips against hers as he shifts.  His hips fall into the cradle of her own, and she can feel his erection against her belly.  He hunches a bit, and she leans up on her toes and then,

“ _God_ ,” she hisses, just as he groans, the taut edge of the zipper of his jeans hitting her _just so_.

How, _how_ did she let it get this far?  How could she be so stupid? 

But…as their breathing slows, as the rising tide of desire begins to ebb, and she buries her hands in the soft, inky hair curling at the nape of his neck – how could she not?  She can tell herself she doesn’t know him as much as she wants.  In a sense, she doesn’t.

She’s afraid, terrified even, trembling in the arms of a man she never really thought she’d find.  But her hopelessly jagged edges are crashing into place.  All the years, all the _torment_ , every life saved a reminder of those she could not.  Could it have been worth it?

 _Then again_ – she thinks, gently, slowly, _agonizingly_ extricating herself from his grip – _could I possibly give it all up?_

She doesn't get far, pulling back just long enough to look into his eyes.  Black, once more, but shining.

“Emma,” he breathes. 

* * *

“Emma.”

Her name falls softly from his lips.  Her breath fans over his face, warm and sweet and smelling of the chocolate he can still taste on his tongue.  He holds her in his arms, pulling gently on her waist with his prosthetic and curling his fingers around her shoulder, burying his face in the crook of her neck.  He can feel all the years – like long, hapless pen strokes on an unending ream of tattered pages.  She is heaven by comparison, and he can actually _feel_ his heart beating in his chest, the heated blood flooding every nerve.

“Killian,” she answers on a plea, her fingers slipping back up into his hair.  A strangled noise catches in his throat as her fingers press against the base of his skull.  He could die a happy man like this, falling apart underneath her touch – even with the damp cold pressing in, the chill of the stone and the rank smell of the alley nigh overwhelming.

And yet it’s inevitable, he supposes, that the fear creeps back in.  That, as she gazes up at him, the gravity of everything he’s asking her to do, everything he’s asking her to give up by holding her in his arms comes crushing down on him.  He pulls away, and there’s a heartbreaking blend of confusion and hurt that flickers across her face as he takes several steps backwards.  She is such an open book.  He hopes he’s not so easily read.

But Killian knows he is, can see it in the way her eyes flit over his face, as if there were writing on his forehead.

It’s this very thought that pushes him out of her arms.  He could stay, he could beg her to end his suffering.  It’s what he wants.  But whatever he wants – whatever he’s _ever_ wanted – seems to turn to ash while he remains, unmoving, everlasting.  He imagines holding her in his arms again, but this time while she fades away, like Liam, like Milah.

“What…” she says, and pauses, looking down the alley and then back at him.

“Just happened?” he finishes, helpfully.  She nods, expression caught between confusion and suspicion.  He wants to be flippant, flirtatious, to push away, but her lips are swollen and her eyes are gleaming and her hair is tangled over her shoulder and he’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life.  The truth slips out instead.

“I was walking…home – ” _for lack of a better word_ , he thinks “ – when I…felt something.”

She leans back.  “ _Felt_ something.”

He scratches behind his ear, eyes dropping to her shoulder as she takes a few steps forward.  “Aye.  Fear, anger, frustration.  Rather out of the blue, and my feet took me on a different path.”  Then, quietly, “To you.  I’m sorry to have interfered, love.  You seemed to have it under control, judging by the state of that man’s face.  I’m afraid I get into a bit of a state.”

“And then you touched him.”

He looks down at his feet, nods.

“And he just sort of…”  She gestures at the ground, a bit wildly, arms swinging.

He looks back up at her, and she’s even closer, but it must have been him that stepped forward, without realizing.  “Indeed he did.”

She tilts her head, considering him.  “That’s some nerve pinch you’ve got there.”

It throws him off guard, her nonchalance, tinged with curiosity as it is.  He expects some shade of disgust, fear at least, concern maybe, at the way he’d brought those fools to their knees.  He wonders when the adrenaline will fade, when she’ll begin to regret kissing him, holding him – God, _touching_ him. 

But the moments wile away, and Emma looks at him no differently.  When he leans forward, so does she.  He reaches out, takes hold of her fingers.  She doesn’t pull away, and he sags where he stands.

“Nerve pinch,” he echoes.

He looks down at her, watches her watching him.  He can see the walls, high and fortified, not unlike his own.  But he can see the cracks as well, fissures widening the longer she gazes at him.

“You have some kind of power,” she says, matter-of-factly. 

He laughs, shortly, feeling a bit hysterical.  “Aye, _some_ kind of power.”

She huffs, releases his hand, arms folding over her chest.  “Are you going to tell me what it is or are you just going to keep parroting me?”

Killian frowns, rocks back on his heels.  “It doesn’t work on you, darling, so it’s beside the point.”

“You tried to use it on _me_?”

He falters, his breath catching in his chest, breaking over his words when he answers in a rush.  “Bloody hell, Swan, _no_.  I can’t control it.”

She looks him up and down, biting at her lower lip.  “But then, why…”

He can hear her question in the silence.  Why _doesn’t it work on me?_   As if she doesn’t know.

“Do you really have to ask?”

Her eyes shutter, the vibrant green dulling.  He barely knows this woman, but he knows, reads it in her guarded expression – she skirts truth, while he prefers to twist it like a knife in his belly.  By this fact alone, he can feel the tension in the air between them rising.

“You _really_ can’t control it?” she says.  “Whatever the hell it is?”

It’s bait, he knows, but his temper flares, and he _takes_ it, leaning forward until his breath stirs the hairs in a tangle around her face.

“That’s what I _said_ , darling,” he bites.  “What’s the alternative?  That I’ve been desperate to fell a perfect stranger with the inimitable power of my touch?  You’ll have to forgive me my incompetence.  I seem to have forgotten that it’s the _third_ time’s the charm.  Or perhaps I’ve just been giving you fair warning.”

She matches his stance, nearly closing the gap between them, and he’s once more assaulted with the smell of chocolate, of cinnamon, of earth and fresh water and the chilly curl of woodsmoke.  It’s as intoxicating as it is enraging.

“Well aren’t you a gentleman.”

The word _gentleman_ falls from her lips like a curse, and he laughs, humorless. 

“Always,” he says.

She reaches out, as before, grasping the lapels of his jacket.  The leather groans beneath her touch, and they’re skirting so artfully along the line between anger and lust that he’s not certain whether he’s due another kiss or a broken nose.

Naturally, she does neither.

“I can heal,” she says.  “ _There_.  If we’re going to play games, it might as well be a one for one.”

He leans back, but he doesn’t get far, her grip punishingly tight.

“I… _what_?”

She rolls her eyes.  “I can _heal_.  With my touch.”  She pauses, then, looking a bit sheepish.  “I can control it, though.”

Sheepishness becomes sympathy and – “Bloody _fucking_ hell.” – oh, but the dark poetry is sickening.  This angel can _heal_ , he the demon that would take it away. He licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry.  He reaches up and pries her fingers from his jacket.

“I should go,” he says, not without great effort, each word cracking on his tongue. 

He turns to leave, but she grabs his hand, pulling him back to face her.

“Are you kidding me?” she says.  “That is _not_ how this game works.”

“Well, love, now we’ve established we’re _both_ cheats.”

He takes another step.  She mirrors, and he can see the very moment her stubborn determination overcomes her fear.  “I don’t think so, buddy.”

“Emma,” he growls.  “You don’t understand.”

“ _Fuck you_ , I don’t understand.” 

She stands before him, feet apart, eyes bright, flush creeping down her neck.  It’s something to behold, though he schools his expression.  But considering he’d been a few scant layers from fucking her (or _being_ fucked, honestly) against a brick wall just minutes ago, he’s sure it’s not convincing.

“Why are you always running?”

He snarls.  “Gives me a head start, I suppose.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Takes a runner to know one, Swan.  So you’ve told me you can heal – ” He hums, disinterest on his face quickly devolving into a sneer as his anger and torment bubble to the surface.  “ – aye, how _wonderful_.  But how long will you stay, I wonder, when I tell you that I _kill_.  One touch is all it takes.  And I have touched _hundreds_ , Emma.  I don’t understand?  I’ve understood more and more with each one of them, every time the light drains from their eyes as they give into the darkness.”

Killian’s self-aware enough to know that he’s pushing her away, and something dark and twisted inside of him jumps with glee when he sees the shock on her face.  But it falters when shock quickly turns to fury. 

“You think I don’t know that you didn’t have a choice?” she shouts.  “My whole _life_ has been nothing but people and circumstances telling me who I am.  Wouldn’t you rather punch back for a change?  You know, figure out – ”  She waves her hands around, searching for words, he imagines, as her anger seems to compel her to shuffle from side to side. “ – what my favorite Goddamn _color_ is before go back to pretending that we’re not immortal and super-powered for a reason?”

Killian squirms in place.  God, but does he want to say _yes_.  There’s something stirring in his gut, a yearning to know every part of her.  And he can feel that his fear is echoed by her own, judging by the warble in her voice, and twitch in her fingers.  He imagines he would jump at the chance were it not for the lives that he had taken, and the promise of yet more, stirring just beneath his skin.

“Just,” she huffs, running her fingers through her hair.  “Just _talk_ to me, okay?  I’m not asking you to skip into the sunset.  Honestly, I don’t _want_ that…”

She trails off, and now _she_ backs away, and he has to force himself to not lunge after her.

 _I am bloody hypocrite_.

“You know Granny’s?” she says.  “Up the road from the pantry?”

He hesitates, but after a moment, he nods.  “Aye, love.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow morning at eight.”  She pauses, humming to herself.  “Well, _nine_ …thirty.” 

He’s caught off guard by the smile that threatens; he has to bite his lip to keep it off his face.

“If you’re there too,” she continues.  She seems frustrated, half incredulous at every word that pours out of her mouth.  “Well...it wouldn’t be terrible.”

He opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand, cutting him off.

“No, you don’t have to…”  She sighs, gritting her teeth, hardly able to look at him, and for a moment, he wonders if now _she’s_ going to run.  He recognized the jitter in her legs, the restlessness as she shifts from foot to foot. 

“…say anything,” she finishes.  “Just come.  Or, you know, _don’t_.”

With that, she disappears around the corner.  Killian finds himself wondering how it is that _she_ walked away from _him_ , when that had been his intention in the first place.  He’s certain he’s bewitched beyond reason.  But where once he was cold, he feels he’s been set aflame.  And so he doesn’t bother pretending – as he stalks along the sidewalk, as he swipes petty cash for a quick meal and a ride back to the block he’s living on – that he hasn’t already accepted her invitation, despite his better judgment.

* * *

Emma wakes surprisingly early the next morning, more out of nerves than anything else.  David eyes her suspiciously when she shuffles through the kitchen for coffee before eight o’clock.  She toys briefly with telling them about Killian, but she’s not remotely ready for Mary Margaret to begin aggressively questioning her wedding preferences.  Or for the safety lecture she’d get for the whole vicious attack part of the story.

(Vicious from _her_ end, anyway.)

So she keeps her mouth shut as she heaps sugar into her coffee.  David watches her for a moment before he speaks.

“Mary Margaret built half a compost bin last night,” he says.  “Just so you know.  She’s out there fiddling with it now.”

Emma shrugs.  “I’d be sorry, but you’ve been complaining about how little composting space we have since July.”

David scoffs.  “And I’d thank you, but it’s the worst bin _ever_.  It’s made out of soft pine and frustration.  It’s like she tried to hacksaw you home.”

Emma rolls her eyes, grinning, as she shuffles around the house, aimlessly trying to get ready while pretending her stomach isn’t in knots.

An hour or so later, and she’s grabbed a booth in the back of the diner.  Granny brings her a hot chocolate, and gives her a knowing look, but chooses not to comment on how fidgety Emma is, how every nervous twitch rends an embarrassing _squeak_ through the diner as the cushy vinyl at her back slides against the leather of her jacket.

Honestly, she’s convinced herself that he won’t show, that he’ll become a distant memory, a harrowing possibility.

But then, at precisely nine-thirty, Killian Jones walks through the door.  It shuts behind him with a loud _thwack_ , one that draws the attention of nearly every other customer in the room.

“I find it interesting,” Emma says, as he takes a seat across from her.  “How you’re like this master of subterfuge, pulling the disappearing Batman routine in gross alleys, and yet you can’t walk through a door without a huge commotion.”

“Ah, doors,” he deadpans.  “My only weakness.”

She smiles, but then the conversation skids to a halt.  Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing.  Emma’s enjoying taking a good look at him, unabashedly admiring the way his hair, just edging towards overlong, curls around his ears, the way it comes to a peak at the top of his head, nearly falling into his eyes.

Emma also notes the layers of clothing.  How his undershirt is tucked into his pants – something she’d noticed as he’d sat down – and how his gloves are tucked into his jacket, held in place with little metal buttons.  On the one hand – and she startles herself with the thought – she wonders what it would be like to peel them off.

On the other hand, she knows why he wears them, and it makes her heart ache.  She’s heard of all sorts of terrible powers.  Horridly destructive powers, ones that have very nearly toppled nations in their wake.  But this is just sadistic, like it was _made_ to punish him.

“So what is it, then?”

She jumps when he speaks, and he smiles, tilting his head as he watches her.

“What’s what?”

“Your favorite color.”

She laughs, and tries not to look him too hard in the eye when she answers, “Blue.”

His smile widens, and she can hardly believe that this guy – with his stupid, shit-eating grin – is the very same that she’d had a screaming match with in an alley just the night before – a curious push and pull where it had seemed they were taking turns giving into fear.  She shakes her head, looking down as she picks a bit of lint off the sleeve of her sweater.

“Yours?” she says.

She half expects him to reply with _green_ , judging by the knowing expression on his face.  But he looks over her shoulder, far away, as he answers.  “Blue as well.  With a touch of gray, like the sea after a storm.”

Emma’s caught off guard by his earnest reply.  He _knows_ it too, the bastard.

“You said you want to get to know me, Swan,” he says, quietly, playing with the buckles on the sleeves of his jacket.  “But are you quite sure?  You could very well learn something you wish you could forget.”

She falters under his stare.  _Does_ she want to get to know him?  She’s the one who invited him here, sure, but it had been an impulse.  Now, it occurs to her that he’s _real_.  Not that she’d thought she’d dreamed him up.  But here in the daylight, under fluorescent lights, in the company of strangers, he’s just so…solid.  Present.

It scares the shit out of her.  But the tone of his voice is challenging, and her pride wins out when she answers him, “Same goes for you, pal.”

He shifts in his seat, running his fingers through his hair, eyes now fixed on some spot on the table.

“I – ” he starts.  He falters when he meets her eyes.  His gaze, it burns, and she feels as though she’s being read, and easily.

“I see you, love,” he says, and he pauses, leans forward.  “ _Emma_.  You’re already afraid you’ve made a mistake.  Afraid to talk.  Afraid to reveal something you hold too close.  I’ve not told you a thing, and you’re already intimidated.”  He pauses again, allows his words to sink in, and she feels as though the ocean in his eyes is pouring over her.  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

She swallows, and shifts, and forces her breaths to steady out.  He’s _not_ wrong, is the thing.  But again, the _challenge_ courses through her blood, and she likes to think she’s lived long enough to have learned to hold her ground.

“Are you talking about me or you?”

To her surprise, he smiles, drawing his lower lip between his teeth as her looks over her head to chest and back again. 

“Aye, but you’re a perceptive lass,” he says.

She can feel a blush rising in her cheeks, but she refuses to look away from him. 

“And,” she adds, ignoring the compliment.  “You’re kind of a smug asshole.”

Killian laughs.  “Blunt as well.”  He sighs, drumming his fingers on the table, the sound muted by the leather stretched over his hand.  “Alright then, Swan, let’s have it your way.  What would you like to talk about?”

Emma’s caught off guard for a moment, but then she shrugs.  “Vaguely personal stuff.  You know, like first date material.”  She catches herself when he quirks a brow.  “Not that this is a first date.”  He frowns.  “Not that it _isn’t_ …fuck, just ask me a question or something.”

He quirks the other brow.  “Alright…how old are you?”

She snorts.  “Well, that’s a rude first question.”

“You seem a practical lass.  I’ve been here for fifteen days.  I’m asking you how long it will be before your power fades.  Surely long before mine.  But _how_ long?  How long before…”

Emma frowns.  She’d rather pretend, if only for a moment, that he couldn’t drop everyone in the room with a handshake, and that she couldn’t follow in his wake and press the life back into them. 

Killian, on the other hand, keeps pushing it back under her nose.    The longer she’s been alive, the longer it will be until her power – more importantly, her immortality – fades.

_How long before I’ve sentenced you to die._

“Swan?”

“Yeah…” She leans back, shaking herself a bit.  “Yeah, sorry.  It’s fine.  I’m fifty.”

He hums.  “A few months, then, perhaps.”

“You?”

He looks down, and whispers, “Three hundred.  Give or take.”

_Holy shit._

“Holy shit.”

 _Crap_ , she hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Rethinking your decision to know me, eh, Swan?” he says.

Honestly, she’d say the same thing, if their positions were reversed.  It’s _infuriating_.  As long as they’re pushing it all out in the open,

“How’d you lose your hand?”

If she thought he’d cower, though, she was wrong.  He looks her straight in the eye, unblinking, as he answers,

“Swordfight.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Three _hundred_ , Swan.  I had a duel.  I lost.”

“Aren’t duels to the death?”

Killian frowns, and he gets that far away look in his eyes again.  She can see where it comes from now.  Three hundred years?  _Shit._

“Honestly, love,” he says.  “I’m not entirely sure I didn’t die that day.”

He clenches his fist, and she can hear his jaw clinking under the grind of his teeth.  It’s clear he doesn’t want to say more.  Another lull, another silence.  Like a wall between them, it grows, stretching higher and higher with each passing second.  She feels the balance tipping, like she’s asking for more than she would be willing to give, so she blurts,

“I’ve let people die before.”

Killian leans back.  “Pardon?”

She sighs.  “I told myself they would have died anyways.  That they deserved it.  That I didn’t owe anyone anything…”  She trails off, heaves another sigh, then adds, “I remember all of their names.”

His face contorts, his expression almost too understanding to bear.  “Emma – ”

“Look,” she interrupts, fearing he’ll _pity_ her.  Which is ridiculous, considering all the untold hurt in the cryptic things that he says.  “Tragic back stories aside, I was thinking we could…you know, be _friends_.  Or something.”

He hums, allowing her redirect.  “Swan, friends or not, if I stay here, you will die.”

She scoffs.  “You’re ridiculous.  Yes, _eventually_ , I will be dead.  But I could also step out of this diner and get run over by a car.”

“Don’t be glib, darling.  You know what I mean.”

Emma huffs, and leans forward.  She takes hold of his hand.  Slowly, she pulls away the glove, the buttons coming undone with neat little _thwips_.  She watches his face, looking for any sign of hesitation.  But his eyes are transfixed on her hand as she drags the leather away from his fingers. 

She tosses the glove aside before she touches the tips of her fingers to his.  Then she waits.  _Waits_ while he works his jaw, while his eyes darken with indecision.

And then, as slowly as she’d taken off his glove, he pushes his hand into hers, until his palm presses against her own.  His fingers are trembling.  For a man so hard, they’re incredibly smooth, guarded from everyday life by leather, by fear.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” he says, voice dropping so low that she can feel it in _her_ chest.  “ _Tell_ me, Swan.  Before I can’t live without you.”

He closes his eyes on a sigh.  Good riddance, because she can hardly look at him.  It’s too much, _too much_.  Every soulmates story she’s heard amounts to a nauseating meet cute and a race to a happy ending.  This, on the other hand, is a train wreck.  Waves crashing against the shore.

“Do you?” she says, quietly.  “Want this?”

He doesn’t hesitate.  Where she steps back, he steps forward, and vice versa.  Like a dance, one she’d apparently been born for.

“Aye, love,” he breathes, hand clenching around hers.  “I _do_.”


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood. Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities. Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half. In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I am insanely grateful for the response to this story. Your reviews and messages are everything to me. I cherish each and every one, to the very bottom of my heart. As always, my love and devotion to seastarved, is-that-what-it-is, and high-seas-swan (all on tumblr) for their help and encouragement. Also, as an extra warning, there is smut in this, between the fourth and fifth page breaks. Just so you know.

_Aye love, I do._

The words fall out of his mouth, and Emma feels as though she falls into the eye of some kind of storm.  Sometimes it’s ugly, and it’s messy, and they skirt into the storm proper – their walls climbing, him pushing and her pushing back, peeling away the layers of terror and torment until they’re both so raw and so _exposed_ that they spend hours at a time just breathing and leaning into one another on a bench as close to the rush of the river as they can manage.

But – oh God, _sometimes_ – he’ll talk about the water, the way it moves, the grit of wet sand beneath his feet, or about the simple joy of swimming on a lonely beach after midnight, bright, bioluminescent algae following in his wake.  And she’ll talk about the smell of the Boston Harbor, the thrill of taking down a skip, the gentle rush of warmth in the ridge of her spine when she brushes away pain and hurt and illness.  She’ll lean into him, and he’ll look down at her, and the cerulean swirling in his eyes will calm the beat of her heart, until her pulse thrums in answer to his.

She thought it would be harder.  There’s darkness in him, and the situation is _beyond_ messed up.  Soulmates, death touches, healing powers – she laughs, a bit manically, if she thinks about it too hard. 

But when she doesn’t…

It’s like she can breathe again.  Maybe for the first time.  And she knows, if it weren’t for David and Mary Margaret, if she’d met this man several years ago, she would have turned tail.  As it is now, with everything she thought she’d never have, she can feel herself falling, little by little, for every detail, every quirk.

She learns he can’t stand for things to be out of order, poking fun at him as he straightens the condiments on the table at Granny’s.  He learns she couldn’t care less where anything is, playfully admonishing her as she strews puffs of cinnamon and salt all over the table –

_She huffs.  “I’m gonna clean it up.”_

_He laughs.  “Aye, as far as you’re capable.”_

_“What’s that supposed to mean?”_  

_“Means there’s been cinnamon on your chin since you sat down, love.”_

– and it’s almost frightening, the way he settles into her life, straight down into her bones.  She figures she ought to be terrified.  And maybe she is, a little.  But all the things that made being with others so Goddamn difficult – her outlandish power, her immortality, the fact that everyone before them, _everyone_ had given up on her before they really even _looked_ at her – has turned on its head. 

So she clings to him.  And he to her, grip tightening as time passes.

On this particular afternoon, as they meander along the city streets, there’s just something about him, something about the poofy coat he has on over his jacket, about the scarf tucked under his chin.  She hangs onto the crook of his elbow, his hand tucked into the pocket on her coat. 

It’s just so easy, _too easy_.  She’s half waiting for the other shoe to drop, half wanting to just grab him and drag him home with her, to hide him away, to keep him and never let go.

“What’s on your mind, love?”

She smiles, shaking her head.  “Oh, nothing.”

He quirks a knowing brow.

“Seriously, it’s nothing.”

The other follows, bunching up beneath a stray tuft of hair falling over his forehead.

“Alright, _fine_.  I was just…wondering how you’d look on a farm.  Leathery city boy in the middle of all those fields.”

He hums.  “On _a_ farm?  Or on _your_ farm?”

She looks down, fidgeting.  “Well, technically, it’s not mine.”

He stops walking, suddenly, and she very nearly trips on air.  He steadies her with the brace on his left arm.

“Swan,” he says, and he reaches out.  She stills, painfully aware of the fact that it’s unlike him to reach first.  He’s tentative, but his fingers are firm against her jaw.  “Ask me anything.  You know I’ll say yes.”

She _does_ know.  And it frightens her.  Frightens them _both_ judging by the hitch in his voice.  Here in the neutral space of the city – where they can hide behind the white noise of traffic and bustle and the frantic rush to just _be_ somewhere – it’s easier to pretend.  That they’re just two broken people, trying something new.

“Would you…”  She trails off, and looks up into his eyes.  The sting of the cold, and the sharp, low angled light of winter cast them in a brilliant shade of blue.  She’s caught off guard.  By his eyes, his hand on her face, his earnest expression. 

“I…”  She huffs, annoyed at her own cowardice, how she swings from wanting to hold onto him forever, and desperately wanting to pushing him away.  So she deflects.  “I can’t even see your face through our breath clouds.”

He smiles.  “Well, Swan, if I hold my breath, will you stop deflecting?”

 _Goddammit_.  She clenches her jaw, and looks up at him.

“ _Fine_.  Do you want to…I mean, you don’t _have_ to.  But if you’d like to get out of the city for a change, you could…you know, come with me?”

Emma imagines what the gibberish that just came out of her mouth would look like written down on an invitation.

But Killian doesn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed.  His grin softens into something more vulnerable, something impossibly genuine, the skin around his eyes crinkling handsomely.  He reaches down, and his fingers tighten around hers.

“Yes,” he says.  And it’s so simple.

_You know I’ll say yes._

She finds herself believing him.

* * *

A few days later, and David and Mary Margaret are at some kind of fertilizer conference, something Emma refused to be bothered with, considering she’d inevitably end up tagging along while they gazed lovingly at each other over piles of festering plant guts –

_“Don’t be mean,” Mary Margaret says.  “It’s decaying organic matter.”_

_Emma sighs.  “Still smells like a skunk armada died inside of a chemical refinery.  I’m not coming.”_

_“Well, in that case, I’ve left eight different numbers where you can reach us.”_

_“Oh my God,_ goodbye _.”_

– only to be nagged at when she fell asleep in literally every seminar.

Besides a welcome dose of quiet – she loves them both to death, but having their big farmhouse all to herself is too good to be true – it does provide the perfect opportunity for Killian to make good on his promise to accompany her home. 

“So this is your farm, eh, Swan?”

He says this as he steps out of the truck.  He’s a bit cheeky in his delivery, but Emma can see the longing in his eyes.  There are tools scattered about.  The chairs on the porch are in a half circle, ready to accommodate impromptu, evening conversations under piles of blankets and with steaming mugs of hot chocolate.  She knows what he’s feeling, because she felt the same thing when she first came here.

Like maybe _home_ wasn’t so unattainable after all.

“Like I said, it’s not _my_ farm.  I couldn’t tell you half of what goes on here.”

He grins, a tentative thing, scratching at the back of his neck.  “Are you quite certain I’m welcome?  I don’t mean to intrude…”

Emma scoffs.  “Please.  You could be a random stranger, and Mary Margaret would drag you inside and feed you until you keeled over.”

Killian regards her, a familiar lost look in his eyes.  He recovers quickly, though, sidling up to her, offering her the crook of his elbow.

“Give me the grand tour, then, love.”

She does.  And it’s _worth_ it, allowing him into her life.  Yes, she will die.  _He_ will die.  She can barely muster the strength to heal a simple cut.  She can hardly flip channels without seeing toxic drivel about forcing people like her to submit to some sort of registration.

But she’s walking her fucking _soulmate_ around her friends’ farm.  Her troubles fade away in the wake of his smile, and his ridiculous commentary.

“This is quite the house you have here, Swan,” Killian says, as they stand arm in arm at the base of the big house’s steps.  “Recently renovated, I should say.”

“Well, yeah,” Emma says.  “It’s like a _million_ years old.  It didn’t even have a bathroom when they bought it.”

“ _Egads_.  No indoor plumbing.  I can’t even imagine.”

She rolls her eyes.  “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

His smile, and his gruff laughter, are his only reply.

* * *

They’re a mile or two along a wooded path towards her meadow before either of them speak again.  Emma wonders why it isn’t more awkward.  And, because she apparently left her filter back at the house,

“Why isn’t this more awkward?”

Killian hums, and nods, as if he’d been waiting for her to say just that.  “Haven’t the faintest idea, love.  Would you prefer it were more awkward?”

“Honestly…maybe?”

He clenches his jaw, and for a moment, she’s afraid she’s offended him somehow.  But then, “Aye.  Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so unsettling.”

She nods.  “I still want you, though.”

He tilts his head, bites his lip. 

“Oh God, _not_ like that.”

He grins, devilishly.

“Also…not _not_ like that?”

He shakes his head.

“God, just shut up and walk.”

“I’ve not said anything, Swan.”

Emma laughs, startling herself.  Suddenly, she feels light, as if she’s floating even, caught up in the timber of his voice.  He is dark swaths and sharp edges, but here in these woods – the trickle of the streams and the rustle of the leaves playing a bucolic melody in the background – there is something heart-achingly soft about him.

So she reaches out and takes his hand.  Killian’s eyes widen, as though he can hardly believe his palm pressing into hers, even though, _God_ , at this point, she would know the press of his hand _anywhere_.  He grins at her, choosing not to comment as, instead, he blinks heavily on a sigh. 

They traverse the remainder of the path, caught in a pleasant silence.  And as they take the final turn into her meadow, she can’t help but stare at him, the clash of Killian Jones against a field of gossamer pastels, the whites and browns and reds of winter.

But then…it’s not really a clash, now, is it.  In fact, if anything – even in the delicate curl of her lips, the flip of her hair, the verdant shine of her eyes – it was _she_ who clashed against the meadow.  Heavy and dark in her loneliness, her presence grating against the bright, fall colors.  The ugly marks in the beech tree down the way a testament to her frustration.

“So,” she says.  “What do you think?”

* * *

“What do you think?”

Killian considers her question.  Clearly, she’s a bit nervous.  And, considering the way she’s fidgeting, this place must be important to her.

But what does he think? 

He thinks a lot of things.  He thinks he’s never breathed quite so easily.  He thinks the coating of snow on the ground casts the light on her face in _just_ such a way that he feels he’s been healed simply by looking at her.  He thinks the stark jut of the leafless trees into the brilliant blue of the sky rivals the ocean in beauty. 

He thinks Emma Swan – here in her element, soft edges and sharp wit – is light, and he is shadow.

“I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Emma laughs, delighted, and reaches up, clutching at his chin, before he can turn and look at her.

“If you’re about to turn this way and _gaze_ at me, I’d suggest you think twice before I’m obligated to smack you.”

He smiles, but it feels wrong on his lips, stretching painfully across his teeth.  “Can’t blame a man for trying, Swan.”

She smiles up at him.

 _Too good_.

It’s like a mantra in his head, one he’d repeated to himself on the drive up from the city.  As hulking buildings gave way to endless fields and patches of winter-bare trees and underbrush.  _Damn_ if she wasn’t the best friend he’d had in ages.  But as their time together wore on, the more he wanted her.  Wanted to _hoard_ her, take her where no one could follow.  And the more he did, the further he fell – _as if he hadn’t already fallen_ – the more real it all became.

 _Let her go, you bloody fool._  

The power that thrums in the tips of his fingers is fading.  But his past will catch up with him, and this is her _last chance_ to run.  He wants to tell her.  He wants to pull her in and tell her about the people he’d killed, the headstrong woman he’d befriended.  He wants to tell her how he’d been betrayed, tell her _exactly_ how he’d lost his hand.  He wants to whisper these things into the hollow of her throat.  He wants her hands in his hair and her soothing voice in his ear.

He wants, he wants, he _wants_.

The prospect of smoothing over the cracks in his life with the soothing balm of her lips, the mere inkling of feeling the pull of age after so many years, so many _centuries_ , is almost maddeningly exhilarating.  But he couldn’t bear to pull Emma into his circle of hell.  It would be entirely unfair.

So despite these past few weeks.  Despite the fit of her hand in his.  Despite the fact that he feels his lonely forever has already come to a screeching halt, he resolves to push her away.

“Emma,” he says, haltingly.  He disentangles his fingers from hers.  Her smiles fades, and his heart beats painfully in his chest.

“Killian.”  There’s a warning in her tone.

“ _Emma_ , when are we going to stop pretending?”

She frowns, and turns, walking across the meadow, and towards a runt of a tree.  He wonders if he’s being dismissed, almost hopes that he is – _bloody fucking coward_ – but she throws an imploring look over his shoulder.  He, inevitably, follows.

“Do you know what this is?”

The tree before him is clearly an ancient thing.  Even so, its thin, gnarled limbs twist heavily towards the ground.  The smooth, pale bark glimmers in the early afternoon light.  Killian watches as Emma reaches out, fingers dragging over several small slash marks that trip their way up from the base.  A cursory glance – not to mention the haunted look in Emma’s eyes – tells him _exactly_ what this is.

“Aye,” he breathes.  “A calendar.”

She hums, and her knuckles turn white as she presses them into the years she’s written on this miserable tree.  “I don’t want to do this anymore, Killian.  I don’t want time to go by while I stand still.  I thought…I just _thought_ that you didn’t either.  That you _wanted_ this.”

 _Wanted_ me, he hears.

“Aye, love, I do.  More than anything.”

She growls, frustrated.  “Then why are you pulling away?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.  Can’t you understand that?”

She turns, and closes the distance between them.  Her eyes are blazing, her hands are clenched.  There’s a flush creeping up her neck, and he’s half a mind to just grab her and end this agony that’s sparking between them.

“Uh, _no_ , I can’t.  And I can tell when you’re hiding something.  You want to leave?  _Fine_.  But after the time we’ve spent together, I think the least you can do is be upfront.”

He grinds his teeth.  “God, but you’re a stubborn lass.”

“And you’re full of shit.  Don’t you dare say goodbye to me, Killian Jones.  Not without reason.”

He sighs.  “I’ve already told you that my brother died.”

She nods.

“Well…not long afterwards…I was so lost.  I’d only recently discovered that I could – ”  He holds up his hand, wiggling his fingers, trying for a smile, though it feels more like a grimace.  “ – well, you know.  I fell into the employ of a man by the name of Gold.  I can’t even begin to guess how long he’d been alive.”

She swallows.  “Is he still?”

He nods.  “Aye.  Much older than I, I’d wager.”

“Could he… _do_ anything?”

His fingers tremble, he shifts from foot to foot.  Emma watches him, and he wants to lie, he wants to say no.  But she’d see it.  She always does.

So he answers her, quietly, the crushing weight on his chest making him feel winded.  “We were all powerless to his command.  If he bid us do something, we did.  He can make you see what’s not there, remember what didn’t happen.  It fades, with time, with distance.  But when he owns you, you lose yourself.”  

“God, _Killian_.”

She reaches for his hand, but he pulls away.

“I was certain it was all for good.  At first.  I killed only when necessary, and for what I thought was the good of all.  But the darkness…it creeps up on you.  Decades later, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who stood in my way.  If I did…well, turns out you can be convinced that you’re in quite a lot of pain.”

Emma regards him, a frown pulling at her lips, her eyes shining yet with unshed tears.  He almost wishes it were all out of fear.  But all he sees is an all too forgiving marriage of sorrow and curiosity.

“How did you quit?” she asks.

Killian frowns.  “Who says I’ve quit?”

“Would you just _stop it_ , already?”  She leans back, taking hold of his face with both of her hands.  “Stop trying to make me hate you as much as hate yourself.”

Killian doesn’t reply.  Not at first at least.  He simply looks at her, beyond confused, positively beside himself with disbelief.

Is this what it’s like?  She’s sliding down, _down_ into the chasms he’s wrought in his soul.  With every life, every person he’d touched, every life he’d taken, he’d given himself away to a darkness he was certain he could never escape, a penance he could never pay. 

“Emma,” he says, reaching up to pull one of her hands from his face.  She doesn’t let him get far, curling her fingers in a vice grip around his.  Her other hand drags nonsense into his cheek.  Her touch, it’s nearly enough to undo him.

But he presses on, his voice a mere whisper on the breeze.

“I didn’t quit because I saw the light,” he says.  “I befriended Gold’s wife, and we were foolish enough to convince ourselves that we could overthrow him, that we could at least put an end to his pointless tyranny.  I don’t know how, but he caught wind of it.”  He swallows, and his voice catches on the realization that he’s spoken of this to no one in centuries.  “He killed her in front of me, and challenged me to a duel.  And, well…”  He gestures to his prosthetic.

Emma reaches out, takes hold of his wrist, fingers smoothing over the brace.  “Your hand.”

“Aye, love.  He didn’t need any skill.  He could have forced me to cut my _own_ hand off, if he’d wanted to.”  He pauses, the pain in his wrist flaring.  He presses his prosthetic into his thigh, the pressure easing the burn.  Then, “I nearly bled to death, then I nearly died of the fever.”

“But you lived.”

“Perhaps.”

She huffs.  “Killian, _please_ – ”

“He knows I’m alive, I’m sure of it.  I’ve not seen him, not even heard talk of him.  But _Emma_ , if he knew about you…” 

“Killian, that is such bullshit – ”

“If he _knew_ , he would – ”

“You don’t get to make that choice – ”

“ – _kill_ you – ”

“Would you just _shut up_ and let me tell you – ”

“ – at the _very_ least – ”

“ – Goddammit Killian, I _love_ you.”

He falls silent.  The _world_ falls silent.  Nothing but the echo of her words in her mind.

_I love you._

_I love you._

Emma breathes in, and buries her hand in his hair.  When she says it again –

“I love you.” 

– it’s hardly a whisper against his lips.  He loses himself once more, but to the sound of her voice, to the gentle drag of her fingers against his scruff, to the press of her hips against his as she leans ever forward, as he catches her and pulls her tight against his chest. 

He breathes in, and he can taste the cinnamon on her breath.  He breathes out, and the curl of her tongue against his sets his fallen heart back into place.

“Don’t do this,” Emma says, whispers it into his mouth.  “Tell me you’re leaving, and then _leave_.  Or tell me you’re staying, and stop running.”

Killian presses his forehead into hers, his nose pressing into her cheek.  Winter’s wet chill is stinging at the tips of his fingers, but once more, he tugs the glove from his hand, dragging it away with the thumb of his prosthetic.  He reaches up, and traces the shell of her ear, the curve of her jaw.  He pulls gently at the strands of her hair, and he allows only the slightest flicker of doubt, of fear, of the crushing weight of his self loathing, before he answers her,

“I love you.”

* * *

The walk back to her cottage seems to last for hours.  And maybe it does, because every time he looks at her, she can’t help but kiss him.  On his lips, his cheeks, his nose, the junction of his ears and throat.  He returns the favor, his scruff scratching what she’s sure are angry red marks into her neck that will last well into tomorrow.

When they do finally manage to stumble through her front door –

“Swan, the door is stuck.” 

She groans, loudly.  “Well, I hope you get it un-stuck in the next thirty seconds, because your pants are coming off either way.”

– the warm, dry air inside is a sharp contrast against the chill that’s rattling in her bones.  It sets her lips abuzz, a tingle in her face as her blood heats, both for the cast iron radiators beneath the windows, and the mouth that’s biting a path down her neck.  She makes a mess of his clothes as she pulls at the fabric, as her fingers wander impatiently up the skin of his chest and down the front of his pants.

Killian gasps, pulling away from her neck as she takes hold of him, stalling her with his hand around her wrist.

“Have mercy, Swan,” he says, smiling when she looks up at him.  “It’s been some centuries now.”

She draws back a bit, just enough to wiggle her fingers out from the space between his stomach and his jeans.

“Shit,” she says.  “Sorry.”  Then, because he’s looking at her so earnestly, she reveals quietly, “Ten for me.”

Emma figures the appropriate response is something along the lines of, _Psh only ten?_   She shrinks away a bit, shameful, pulling her other hand out from under his shirt.  But he shakes his head, gentle understanding in the way he catches her hand in his, placing it on his chest.

“It’s alright,” he says.  Then, softer, pleading, “Touch me, Emma.”

Together, she thinks, they add up to the most impressive dry spell in the history of the planet.  And that would frighten her, but the twist of nerves in the pit of her stomach is not unlike the fear that’s pushing on his brow.  So she takes hold of his face, her serious expression belying the lightness of her tone,

"We're going to be bad at this."

Killian laughs, breaking the tension a bit, the sound muffled as she goes to pull his shirt over his head.  He comes out the other side, hair wildly askew.  Now exposed from the waist up, she relishes the opportunity to drag her hands over the hair on his chest, around to his back, dipping down into the crevice of his spine, and over his shoulder blade.  She means to kiss him, but when she looks up, his eyes are closed, his mouth parted, his expression so broken, she halts, though she does not pull away.

“Killian?”

He opens his eyes.  They glimmer, wetly.

“Killian,” she repeats, whispering now.  “What’s wrong?”

He heaves a sigh, and she resumes the work of her hands, one grasping at his neck, the other dancing over his stomach.  His breath hitches.

“It’s been…”  He swallows.  “ _Centuries_ , Emma.  Not once.  Not _once_ has someone…”

He trails off, finishing the thought with a kiss.  First to her cheek.  Then her chin.  The tension settles back in the room, three fold the ferocity.  Reverence turns to desperation as he yanks off the harness that holds his prosthetic.  It drops to the floor with a thud, followed by her sweater, her shirt, her bra – until they’re both bare from the waist up.  He crushes her to his chest, stumbling a bit as she walks him back towards the bedroom. 

Emma had almost forgotten what it really meant to make love to someone.  How, instead of chasing release, she pushes it further and further away, in favor of learning every sound, every quirk, every precious imperfection.  She imagines it’s amplified by the fact that fate seemed to have had a heavy hand in their coming together, but _dammit_ , either one of them could have walked away.  They _chose_ this.

So here they are.

Her, grasping at his shoulders, pulling at his hair, gasping into the jut of his collarbone.

And him, just… _talking_ nonstop.  Half of it is indecipherable, and the other half is almost entirely expletives – hissed, whispered, keened into every new patch of skin that’s revealed as they shed the rest of their clothing.

“Fuck, _Emma_ ,” he whines, straight into her mouth as he presses her into the mattress, grinding his body chest to knee down the length of hers, clearly on a frenzied quest to have every bit of his skin touched without deadly intent, and to take her along for the ride.

Emma, meanwhile, is all moans and gruff sounds as she maps every rough little hair on his body with her fingers, her toes, her lips – every mole and every freckle.  There are stories written all over him, and she intends to read every one.

She’s worrying a mark into his shoulder with her teeth, nails scratching a winding path along his side when he pulls back, only far enough to look her in the eye.  He stares at her for a moment, blinking away the haze in his eyes.

“Condom?”  His voice is throaty, as wrecked as she feels.

She nods, answering quietly, hands moving up to anchor in his hair, “Surprisingly, yes.  Nightstand.”

It takes them at least another twenty minutes to get the condom the five or six feet from the drawer to his cock –

“You have to let go of me, love,” he says, though he sinks further against her even as he speaks, nose pressing against her neck as he licks at her collarbone.

“I don’t have to do shit.”

– after which he finally, _finally_ (“Finally,” she gasps.) pushes into her.

“Emma,” he breathes.  “Bloody fucking hell.  Love – _God_ – you feel so good.”

Though she wants to spur him on, she waits.  Waits as he stutters heavy breaths into her chest.  He lifts his head, and gazes down at her.  As overwhelmed as she is by all of this, she can’t imagine what he must be feeling.  Though he can appear almost boyish, never before has he seemed as aged as he truly he is.  Not until this moment, when he’s looking down at her, and the ache of hundreds of years without human touch reflect in his eyes.

“Killian,” she says, hands dragging, pressing into every inch of skin she can reach, as the tension in her lower back snaps, and she cants her hips up and into his.  “ _Move_.”

He groans, and complies.  And she was right, they _are_ kind of bad at it.  It takes a good while for them to find a rhythm, several false starts punctuated by a sharp roll of his hips and a pair of frustrated groans.  But when they do, her ankles locked over his back, his hand pressing bruises into the skin of her thigh as he waxes a nigh-unintelligible sermon about her against her lips, teeth dragging over her chin.

When she comes, just moments before him, it’s only by virtue of the fact that he’d entangled their fingers together as he leaned on his blunted arm, pressing them into her clit.  (And that he’d held a long-winded conversation with himself about whether the angle of his hips was getting her off – “No, no, a bit higher, _deeper_.  Bloody hell, Swan, let me hear you, love…there, right _there_.”)

They just barely manage to clean themselves up – tripping over one another in the bathroom as an exhaustion born of incredible emotional highs and lows sets in – before they fall back into bed, asleep before they can say a proper goodnight.

* * *

“You talk in your _sleep_ , too.”

Killian wakes to Emma’s lips pressed to his forehead, then to his cheek, then once more to his jaw as she whispers the words in his ear.

“I was considering the morning cuddling routine,” she says, looking down at him with a smile.  “But you sleep forever, _and_ you won’t shut up.”

He yawns.  “Apologies, Swan.  I’m normally an early riser, but a lovely siren woke me a few times in the night.”

She laughs.  “And a chatter box woke _me_ like an hour ago.”

Briefly, Killian worries that he may have said something that upset her, though she seems cheerful enough.  Liam had complained of his nightly restlessness, many years ago, but that was before he’d been haunted by quite so many ghosts.  And since then, there’s been no one around to complain about it.  Small favors, he supposes.

“If you’re worrying that you said something scandalous, I’ll stop you right there.”

_Bloody mind reader._

He quirks a brow.  “Not even a salacious remark?”

“I mean, I can’t say for sure.  I think you made up your own language.”

He laughs.  “So you woke me to shut me up, then.  Not so much insatiable, as wanting for peace?”

She grins, and the pale light of morning sets her skin aglow.  He’s nearly too distracted by the way the green of her eyes lightens – diluted by the soft sunshine, glistening as she speaks – to register her reply.

“Can’t it be both?”

He grins back, wickedly, but swallows the innuendo on his tongue in favor of getting dressed.  She’s rather cheery, but there’s something, he realizes, _something_ sitting heavy on her shoulders.  She shifts and she fidgets, even as she watches him dress.  Killian wonders if he ought to press her for more, but judging by the way she inhales sharply, then exhales heavy on the edge of unspoken words – well, it seems the silence is doing the job for him.

“So,” she says.

He turns, finds her sitting on the edge of the bed, very nearly vibrating in place.  He’s pulling his brace over his left arm.  She watches with a vague sort of curiosity, but doesn’t comment, letting her quiet _So_ echo through the room for a moment before she takes yet another deep breath,

“So, uh, David and Mary Margaret are back.”

He nearly drops his prosthetic before he can snap it into place.  He tries to recover with a nonchalant little flick of his wrist, as if the damn thing were trying to leap out of his hand.  It had been mere _hours_ since they’d virtually promised themselves to one another, and now it seems he’s minutes away from meeting her friends, her _family_.  Fear settles heavy in his throat, but he swallows it down as he looks at her.

“Is that so?”

She nods, and the fear now stirring in his gut is mirrored in the way she chews at her bottom lip.

“I can hide you if you want,” she says, and looks down, tapping an atrociously off-beat rhythm against the inside of her thighs.  “You’ll meet them eventually, I guess.  But I mean, if you’d rather wait…”

As he watches her shift, her eyes darting around the room, a warm rush of tenderness sweeps over him, all the way down to his toes.  Maybe it’s because it’s been so long since he’s felt anything like this towards anyone.  Or maybe – in any world, any time, any of the infinite variations of life and love and loss – it was always going to be like this.

Whatever the reason, the fear begins to dissipates, and he smiles, reaching out to tug at a stray lock of hair twisting under her chin.

“Now’s as good a time as any, Swan,” he says.  “I said I’m in this for the long haul.  Tentative though I may have been, I don’t make a habit of reneging on my promises.”

She smiles back, a bit tremulous, and she takes his hand.

“Okay,” she says, quietly.  “Prepare to be mercilessly hugged.”

He laughs, a bit disbelieving.

(Though he double checks the clasps on his gloves, and pulls the long neck of his shirt up under his chin.)

* * *

No more than thirty minutes later, Killian finds himself in a merciless embrace.

“Watch the bear hug, Mary Margaret,” Emma says.  “He saps people when he touches them.”

The pixie of a woman pulls back, though her hands stay bunched in the leather of his sleeves.  Killian can see the surprise in her eyes, but there’s a heartwrenching lack of fear.  He clears his throat, and looks down at his feet, tucking his hands into his pockets.  Mary Margaret reaches up and pats at his shoulder, and he’s – well he’s rather _shocked_ , to be honest, when he looks back up to find a smile on her face.

“We once had a farm hand that could freeze things at will,” she says.  “Shattered a few windows here and there.  Burst a pipe, too, I think – ”

Killian can practically _hear_ Emma rolling her eyes.  “Is this supposed to be helping?”

Mary Margaret laughs.  “My point is that we don’t _choose_ these things.  But we do choose each other.”

David, who up until now had remained stubbornly silent, arms folded over his chest – apparently caught somewhere between morbid curiosity and what Killian imagines is a fond protectiveness over Emma – leans forward, tilting his head from one side, then to the other.  He looks Killian up and down, pausing briefly over his prosthetic, before looking him hard in the eye.

“So…you’re Emma’s soulmate?”

“Oh my God,” Emma says, exasperated.  “ _Yes_.”

David hums.  “And you have Rogue’s X-Men superpower.”

Mary Margaret huffs.  “ _David_.”

“ _What_?  I wasn’t the only one thinking it.  Right?”

Mary Margaret steps away from him, at which point Killian exhales, shakily, reaching blindly behind him for Emma’s hand, which she grasps, tightly, nearly to the point of pain.  But it’s grounding.  An anchor in a sea change.  And he doesn’t let go.  Not when Mary Margaret insists they come into the kitchen for coffee, or hot chocolate in Emma’s case.  Not when David glowers at him from every corner of the room.  Not even when Mary Margaret’s gentle welcome slides into a deceptively innocuous interrogation.

“So,” she says.  “ _Killian Jones_.  That’s an interesting name.”

Killian smiles, though he shrinks into Emma a bit as Mary Margaret leans over the counter, and as David plunks into the stool next to him.  Old habits, and all that.

“Aye,” he says, sighing as Emma fiddles with his prosthetic.  “It’s Gaelic.”

“And where are you from?”

“England, originally.”

“And how old are you?” David interjects.

Mary Margaret flicks his ear.  “First, _ow_.  Second, it’s not an unreasonable question.  He could be like a hundred.”

He looks down at Emma, who’s grinning up at him, even as she rolls her eyes.  He can see why she loves them. 

“Higher, mate,” Killian says. 

Mary Margaret and David wear equally aghast expressions.

“A hundred and one?” David says.  “A hundred and _two_?”

“Okay,” Emma says.  “Before you spend the rest of your lives guessing, he’s like three hundred.”

To Killian’s utter horror, tears spring to Mary Margaret’s eyes.  Even David’s carefully guarded expression falls.

“ _Emma_ ,” she says, her bottom lip quivering.  “All those years…”

Emma smiles.  “I know.”

“Damn,” David says.

The lot of them settle into a silence.  Killian can’t say it’s entirely uncomfortable.  Only, he’s not been in such an enclosed space with this many people before in quite some time.  It would be off-putting, but Emma is leaning casually into his shoulder.  The entire room smells of coffee and chocolate and cinnamon.  It’s overwarm, but when David excuses himself to his work, Emma smiles crookedly at the flush on his cheeks and helps him peel off his jacket.  Mary Margaret makes to follow her husband, but she lingers in the doorway.

“One last question,” she says.

Killian smiles as Emma tugs off his gloves.  He feels a bit like a child, but her soothing fingers are heaven itself, and he can scarcely hope to school his expression, never mind insist the she stop.

“Ask away, milday,” he says.

“Where are you staying?”

Killian shrugs, and scratches at the back of his neck.  Mary Margaret’s eyes are boring into him from across the room.  And he’s known this woman for all of twenty minutes, but he imagines he could no more lie to her than to Emma.

“Eh,” he says.  “Truth be told…I’ve been squatting on the outskirts of the city.”

Mary Margaret gasps, and he figures he’s in for a good verbal lashing, a lecture on morality and the rule of law. 

But then, matter-of-factly, “Not anymore.  You’re staying _here_.”

Killian leans back.  “Sorry?”

Mary Margaret doesn’t hear him, though, off like a shot towards the front door.

He turns to Emma, saying again, “Sorry?”

Emma shrugs.  “How dare you be homeless in front of Mary Margaret.”

“It’s really quite unnecessary, love.  I’ve been fending for myself since before your _ancestors_ were born.”

“Well, just a warning, the more you resist, the more elaborate her plans will get.  By the time I’d given up and moved in, ‘take the spare room’ had turned into ‘here’s an entire house’.”

Killian laughs.  “You know, Swan, you never did tell me how, exactly, _you_ came to be here.”

“Oh.  Well…”

Emma hops off her stool, and goes about fixing herself another hot chocolate.  Killian follows suit – fiddling with the coffee pot – in the hopes that, if their hands are busy, she’ll open up a bit more.  Over the course of the past few weeks, he’s had the pleasure of learning all sorts of about things Emma Swan, from how she likes her coffee (“Black and sludgy and slightly old.”  “That’s disgusting, Swan.”) to how she got the scar on her left calf (“The tiller threw a rock and, I swear to God, it arced _backwards_ just so it could lodge itself into my leg.  It was muddy and sharp and there were bugs on it.”  “That’s equally disgusting, Swan.”).

But she’s had little inclination to share much substantial about her past, aside from vague references to more than one man that had ultimately decided her agelessness was wholly unappealing aside their mortality.  He’s hardly itching to share, himself.  It’s a curious push-and-pull, wherein they seem to take turns being overcome by their insecurities. 

So he watches, he waits.

Then, when he’s nearly given up hope, 

“I came here same as you, really.”

Killian doesn’t look at her, not at first, just reaches for a fresh filter.  But then her hand appears in his vision, oh so comically dusted with chocolate powder.  He bites his lip, and looks down at her.

“I worked at Cincinnati Children’s before this.  A night janitor.  And I…”  She swallows, and puts the kettle stop the stove, the click of the gas harsh in the brief silence.  “I just couldn’t take it anymore.  The pain, the death, like it was pressing in from all sides.  So I quit and, like an idiot, didn’t have any other job prospects.  I met David and Mary Margaret at the food pantry.  I don’t know how they got the story out of me.  They’re magic like that, I guess.” 

Killian smiles, softly, reaching out to fluff her hair a bit.  “A special brand of post-soulmate magic, I presume.”

Emma smiles back.  “Yeah, you could say that.  No powers beforehand, though.  David’s probably jealous.”

Killian scoffs.  “That I can _kill_ people when I touch them?”

“ _Drain_ ,” she corrects, like a reflex.  “And David is like the ultimate fanboy.  He’ll probably secretly watch X-Men tonight.”

Killian laughs.  It feels a bit hollow.  They laugh, and they joke, but he can’t escape the gravity of the decision that they’ve made.  He’s half a mind to ask her whether or not she’s _certain_.  But he’s entirely unprepared to hear her tell him that she loves him again.  She is a fresh, sprawling meadow, and he is the hulking, ancient, irrevocably scarred tree that’s haunting it.

“Hey,” Emma says, and he starts when her hand grips at his elbow.  “You’re brooding.”

He sighs, and drops the filters on the counter.  “I just…couldn’t bear it.  If…”

He can hear her swallow, can see her throat working out of the corner of his eye.  “If what?”

“If I had to go back.  To the way it was before.”

She grits her teeth, and holds onto him even tighter.  Her fingers are cutting off his circulation, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at her. 

“I don’t…” she starts, voice sounding thick in her throat.  She coughs, and leans forward, until his arm is flush against her chest, warmth seeping from his shoulder to his chest.  “I couldn’t either.”

He turns, gently prying her fingers from his arm, pressing them against his chest.  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

"You won't."

“That’s quite a lot of faith you’re putting on me, Swan.”

She smiles, and it’s hesitant, but radiant in the early morning haze.  He cannot help but to smile back as she answers him,

“I know.”

* * *

It’s late evening before they’re alone again, David having apparently decided he would drag Killian around the farm in the hopes of keeping them apart – aggressively pretending that the he and Emma _weren’t_ going to be sleeping in the same bed come nightfall.  He’d toyed with returning to the city, but he rather feared Mary Margaret’s retribution should he sleep one more night outside of her _violently_ tender care.

Emma scoffs as they settle into bed. 

“ _Violently tender_ ,” she mimics.  “You’re so dramatic.”

“Where did you find these people, eh, Swan?”

She laughs.  “God, who knows.  I think they fell straight out of a fairytale.”

“Indeed.  Best I stay here, then, before they drop a house on me.” 

She rolls her eyes.  “You know, you don’t _have_ to stay here.”

There’s an undercurrent there, one that he’s heard several times over the past few weeks.  Like she’s giving him permission to leave.

_And who can blame her, you bloody wanker?_

Killian reaches up, fingers skipping along the delicate skin of her throat – a gentle plea – as he speaks.  “It’s like I said, Swan.  We should stop pretending.  I’ve made my choice.  Wherever you go, I’ll follow.  If you’ll have me.”

He leans over her, and the chains around his neck fall against her chest, the chilled metal making her jump as it skitters across her collar bone.

She rolls her eyes.  “Yes, I’ll _have_ you, you idiot.”

He kisses her.  It’s completely graceless, teeth knocking together as they smile.  And despite the darkness hanging over his head, the shadows licking at his back, the pieces of himself he’s been missing are shining in the light of her eyes.  So he gives in.  Into the curl of her fingers in his hair, into the drag of her palm down his chest, and further still until he’s gasping into her mouth.  Until his fear melts first into a haze of lust, and then into the gentle burn of affection when he settles his head against her chest.


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood. Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities. Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half. In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t even begin to describe how much everyone’s love and encouragement about this story means to me. I'm just so touched, and I'm extremely grateful for every review. This part is a bit shorter, a bit slower, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. As always, my love and devotion to sea starved, is-that-what-it-is, and high-seas-swan for their help and encouragement.

Killian wakes to Emma pulling at the chains around his neck, the echoes of a nightmare fading as he blinks away the blur of – judging by the cast of the moonlight – naught but a few hours of sleep.  He feels sluggish, a sheen of sweat on his skin. 

“S’I talking again, love?” he slurs.

She nods as she draws her fingers over his pendants, first the silver sword, then over the skull and crossbones.  She seems contemplative, a furrow knit between her brow.  He reaches up, smoothing it over.

“Utter nonsense, I imagine?” he says.

She hesitates, and he holds his breath as she reaches down for the ring.  He lets it out, chest quivering as she looks up at him.

“You were talking to someone, I think,” she whispers.  “Somebody called Liam?”

He holds still as she fiddles with the ring.  In all honesty, he tries not to look at it.  Tries not to even touch it, if he can, feeling positively unworthy, though beholden to carry it with him, if only as a reminder.  He doesn’t answer her, at a loss for words.  He just waits.  Waits for what he knows is coming next.

“This is gorgeous,” she says, a bit absent minded as she turns it over and over again in her fingers.  Then, when she looks back up at him, “Was he your father?”

He watches her, intently, eye roaming over her face as she looks back down to admire the deep, glittering ruby.  She traces the tiny designs, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth.

“No,” he answers.  “Liam…he was my brother.”

She sucks in a sharp breath.  “You told me he died…?”

He nods.  “We – he and I were – ”

He realizes, as he speaks, that he’s not spoken this story aloud since he’d told Milah – huddled by a roaring fire, mere breaths apart despite the danger laced in his skin.  And this, only days before Gold had killed her in a fit of rage and banished him after the duel that took his hand. 

That was over two hundred years ago.  _Two hundred_.  And yet the words still turn to ash in his mouth.  He heaves a terrible, trembling sigh.

“It was…”  He pauses, swallows.  “Before the power manifested…”

He falters once more.  She shushes him with gentle fingers, first brushing the hair from his eyes before falling to press into cheek, then further still to his neck.  Her touch burns against his skin, and he’s caught in some hell-space between wanting to grab hold of her and never let go, and wanting to push her away, where his past can’t touch her. 

“You don’t have to – ” she starts.

“I did it,” he interrupts, words falling from his mouth, unbidden. 

He startles himself, and he can see the surprise on Emma’s face, though she tries to hide it, lips pursed, jaw clenching.  She breathes in, then out, before she asks, hesitantly, “Did what?”

She knows.  Killian can tell.  Can see it in the way she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, the way her hand stills on his chest.  But he has to tell her, _has to say it_ …

“I killed him.”

He expects her to gasp, to startle, to pull away, to lean back, _something_.  But Swan… _his_ _Swan_ …she makes a habit of surprising him.  She simply waits for him to continue, fingers resuming their nonsensical path along the back of his skull.  He closes his eyes, allowing the years to wash over him as he speaks.

“I’ll spare you the historical details, love.  Suffice it to say, the _Jewel of the Realm_ was a bloody marvel…”

She smiles, wanly.  “That your boat?”

He gives her a look.  “ _Ship_ , Swan.  And aye.  Belonged to Great Britain, in principle.  To my brother, in heart.  Fastest bloody vessel on the high seas.  Liam, he…” 

He pauses, pressing his forehead into hers.  She waits, patiently.  One minute.  Two.  Three more, at least, before she shifts.  “He what?” 

Killian swallows, and the force of it sets his throat aching.  “The sea is not to be trusted.  Looked to be fine weather, but a squall blew in from the south.  The _Jewel_ took quite a beating.  The mainmast in particular…”

_“Lieutenant!” His brother beckons him from the quarterdeck, voice hardly discernable above the howling wind._

_Killian is nearly thrown off his feet as he ascends the stairs.  “Aye, Captain.”_

_“Take the helm.  You’ve a better handle on her than I.”_

_“But Liam – ”_

_“That’s an order, Lieutenant.  There’s a tear in the mainsail and the rigging’s gone mad.”_

_Killian obeys, but with no small amount of reluctance as he watches his brother work alongside a few old salts to put the mast to rights.  They manage, just barely, and as the storm dies down at last – the favorable turn in the weather met with a raucous cheer – Liam rejoins him at the helm.  Killian smiles, a congratulatory remark on the tip of his tongue, when he notices a gash on Liam’s forearm, blood dripping from his fingertips._

_“You’re hurt,” Killian says._

_Liam sighs.  “Seven hells.”  He holds out his arm, smiling.  “Do me a favor, then, eh little brother?”_

_“_ Younger _brother,” Killian grumbles, as he takes hold of Liam’s arm.  He pulls his neckerchief from around his neck, pressing it gently against the wound._

_It takes him a moment, but it doesn’t escape Killian that, the harder he presses, the more the cut gushes, blood now flowing freely, coating Liam’s hands, Killian’s even, now the cuffs of his overcoat._

_Liam gasps, his face paling.  “Killian, what…”_

_Killian catches him when he falls forward, shouting for help as they collapse in a heap on the deck.  His hands roam, pausing over the wound yet again, but then frantically moving on when his touch only seems to encourage it to bleed…_

“…and, ironically, it was my desperation to save him that ultimately killed him.  My own brother.”

“Oh God.  _Killian_.”  She reaches up, tugging at his hair, scratching at his scalp.  There are tears in her eyes, and his as well.  “It wasn’t your fault.  You didn’t know.” 

“Aye, love.  That’s nothing I don’t know.  I’ve pondered this for years.  _Literal_ years, decades even.  But nothing will change the fact that he is dead, and that it was by my hand.”

“Well, shit.”

It’s absurd, but something about her tone – the matter-of-fact manner in which the curse falls from her lips – that, despite the weight in the air, makes him want to laugh.  He bites his lip, choking it back.

“Emma,” he says.  “Liam was just first.  By the time we’d reached England’s shores, I was certain I was possessed by the devil himself.  In my grief – and perhaps more so in my fear – I sought help from…well from _disreputable_ sources, to say the least, running as far and as fast as I could.  To Gold, eventually, when I heard there was someone who could help people like me.  I was desperate, and foolish – ”

“Uh, _not_ foolish,” Emma interrupts.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  Honestly, I freaked the fuck out the first time I healed one of my own cuts.  And, no offense, but that’s a lot more benign.”

He laughs humorlessly.  “Aye, Swan, it is.  Which is why you’re a bloody angel, and I’m bringing hell down upon you with my mere – ”

She clamps a hand over his mouth.  “Stop it.”

He pulls the hand away.  “I just don’t understand how you could – ”

She clamps her _other_ hand over his mouth.  “Seriously, stop it.  _Enough_.  Either shut up and go to sleep, or tell me another story about how you were a pirate.”

He laughs, genuinely this time, nudging her hand away from his mouth with his left wrist.  How she can draw the shadows away from him, he has no idea.  But his heart lightens, even as the terrible story of his brother’s death lingers yet in the room. 

“I’ve told you before, love, I was _not_ a bloody pirate.” 

At her frown, he adds, “Although you’ll be delighted to know that I once had a hook for a hand.”

She appears to startle herself with her bark of laughter.  “You’re joking.”

He smiles, and it feels like he means it.  “Cross my heart, Swan.”

She laughs again, but it’s sleepy.  Killian gathers her in his arms, and whispers outrageous tales of mermaids and sea monsters into her ears.  Stories that he’d once been told on the high seas 

“He would have loved you,” Killian says, softly.

Emma hums in her sleep.

And he repeats, if only to hear his name aloud in the shadows once more. 

_Just once more._

“Liam,” he murmurs.  “He would have loved you.”

* * *

For seemingly no reason whatsoever – besides his _excessive_ protectiveness – David starts work the next morning at dawn.  Emma is beside herself with stubborn indignation, huffing about the kitchen as Killian watches from a stool in the corner.  At least until Mary Margaret ushers him over to the island.  It’s – strangely enough – both hilarious and heartbreaking, watching him futilely resist the tiny woman’s insistence that he be stuffed full of eggs and toast before they begin. 

“You know,” Mary Margaret says, speaking loudly over Killian’s weak protests.  “Did we even _hire_ you?  Officially?  David’s just been dragging you around – ”

“Milady, I assure you, it’s no trouble.  It’s the least I can do.”

“ _Milady_?”  Mary Margaret looks at Emma.  “Keep him.”

Emma laughs as Mary Margaret rushes out the front door after dishing out a seriously obscene pile of breakfast foods. 

“Doesn’t appear to take much to charm your friend, Swan.”

“Oh _please_.  You’re like a scruffy gentleman from the 1800s.  Plus, you’re super hot.  What’s not to like?”

He grins at her over his coffee mug.  “I prefer devilishly handsome.”

In lieu of a sarcastic comeback – which she’s fresh out of, this early in the morning – she stuffs another triangle of toast into her mouth before dragging him outside by his prosthetic.  As he’d stared at Killian with a mixture of awe-tinged curiosity and fatherly disdain, David had informed them that she and Killian would be on compost turning duty.  Her absolute _least_ favorite, especially in the winter.  But David had made it through the morning without anymore superhero comments, so Emma lets it slide.  And besides, it grants her the marvelous opportunity to admire the way Killian’s hair flips out from underneath a snug beanie, one that she tugs playfully over his eyes before they’re off.

They work in relative silence, once she shows Killian how to use the aerator –

“You pretty much just shove it in there, and do kind of a twist flip.”

“If only because of the hour, I’ll choose not to make a comment on your choice of words.” 

“Oh my God, shut _up_.”

– and it’s… _painfully_ pleasant.  She can hardly describe it.  But it’s something like she’s been carrying around a half-done puzzle for most of her life.  And now that he’s here, it’s fitting into place, and the weariness that had settled from her head to her feet, washes away, leaving behind a satisfying ache.

No more than twenty minutes into their chore, she’s given up all pretense of helping, and leans heavy on her shovel.  She chuckles as he grumbles, as little bits of the “ _bloody dirt_ ” wiggle their way in-between his gloves and the sleeves of his jacket. 

Emma breaks the silence, curious.  “Do you think it works with critters too?”

“Pardon?”

“You know, like bugs and bacteria and stuff.  Do you think that dirt you’re playing around with is full of like a billion little dead things?”

“Oh.”  He looks down, wiping his hands on his pants.  “Bugger.”

Killian grabs hold of her hand, yanking her glove off, pushing it into the soil and shaking it around a bit.  “There, love.  Good as new.”

She cackles, her face burning as she laughs, “I can’t bring dead things back to life, you know.”

He quirks a brow, giving her a meaningful look.  “Sure about that, love?”

Emma blushes, and changes the subject.  “ _Anyway_ , I think they’re gone.”

“What?  Our powers?  It could be years for me, yet.”

“Surely there’s a cap or something.”

He shrugs.  “Your guess is as good as mine, Swan.  There’s hardly much precedent.  Only the younger of us are fool enough to come forward for research.  I’m only grateful that it’s never worked on you.  That’s all that matters…”

A shadow falls over his face, a terrible expression caught somewhere between yearning and despair.  She wants to help him, but she’s not sure how, so they fall into an uneasy silence.

“Emma,” he says, at length.  “Do you think…?  That is, could they be – ”  He pauses, turns to look down at her.  “ – gone?”

Emma regards him, tilting her head to the side as she studies his expression.  She doesn’t like what she sees.  More pain, like he’s an endless fount of it.  So she wrenches the tool out of his hand, and drags him towards the fields in the back.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.” 

* * *

“Whose bloody brilliant idea was this?” Killian snarls.

He almost regrets asking the question – _…do you think…?_ – because not ten minutes later, he’s back in the Nolan’s old farm house, leather glove discarded by the front door, David shifting from one foot to another in front of a brick fireplace.  The words were barely out of Emma’s mouth –

“Hey, David, we need a guinea pig to test if Killian’s power is gone.”

Mary Margaret practically leapt from behind a small shed, shouting, “He volunteers as tribute!”

“See?” Emma said.  “Nerds.”

– before he’d found himself questioning of his sanity, and of those around him.  Emma is smiling, the Nolans look almost giddy.  Once upon a time, in taverns of old, tucked in portside towns that have long since withered away to nothing, he’d played games not unlike this.  Bringing men and women to their knees in a bestial display of power that he can hardly stand to think about now.

“Uh, it was _my_ idea,” Emma says, a bit miffed.  “Just _do_ it, like ripping off a band aid.”

David laughs.  “Calm down, would you?  I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Killian swallows down his fear with a clench of his jaw and a throaty sneer.  “So you trust me then, eh, mate?”

David shrugs, ignoring the bite in Killian’s tone.  “Emma trusts you.  Pretty much the same thing.”

Mary Margaret shuffles forward, reaching out.  He stiffens, nearly flinching away.  She pauses, looking into his eyes.  They shine, bright green against the dark sweep of her hair.  They’re trusting, understanding, almost _unbearably_ kind.  Killian leans forward just a tad, and Mary Margaret smiles, laying her hand on his shoulder.  He can feel the warmth seeping down through the leather as her grip tightens.

“Killian, relax.  I know we’ve only known you for a few days now.  But we’re friends, right?”

Friends.

 _God_.

He can only nod, touched to the point of embarrassing himself with what he just _knows_ would be a telling waver in his voice.

“Ready when you are, _mate_ ,” David says.

Killian bites his lip, and wills his arm to reach out.  He grinds his teeth, clenching the muscles in his shoulders, hoping the shudder that starts at the base of his spine, and trembles down to his fingertips, isn’t painfully obvious.  He holds his breath when his fingers graze David’s wrist.  He almost pulls back – he feels as though he’s been set aflame – but, stalwart, he presses harder, and looks up to find David smiling at him.  Killian smiles back.

“Well,” David says, and he pauses, blinking sluggishly.  “Looks like…looks…”

Killian wrenches his hand back, cursing violently as David stumbles on his feet.  He reaches reflexively for Emma, who takes hold of his hand.  There’s a buzz in his fingertips – beneath the self-hatred raging in his blood – an undertone of warmth and peace, an echo of who he imagines this David Nolan must be at heart.  He’s caught between wanting to apologize and wanting to _thank_ him for being exactly who he appears to be.

“Whoa,” David says.  “That sucked.”

“Oh, Killian,” Mary Margaret says, as she rubs at David’s back.  “I’m sorry.”

“ _You’re_ bloody sorry?”

Mary Margaret fixes him with a look.  “It’s not your fault.  Emma, tell him.”

“Seriously,” Emma says.

David groans, and presses his hand to his forehead.  “Besides, isn’t there kind of a last hurrah sort of a thing?  Like it fades and it peaks and it fades…”

“I’ve heard stranger things,” Mary Margaret says, looks back up and frowns when she spots Killian hunching behind Emma.  “Don’t blame yourself.  He’s just a big baby.”

“Hey,” David protests, weakly.

Emma curls her fingers tight around Killian’s, pulling him out the door and towards her little cottage down the way.  He chews on his lip as he follows, a litany of apologies starting and stopping on his tongue.  He knows she simply won’t hear of it.  So he’s at a loss.  He abhors self pity, but he’s convinced of the truth of it now,

“Seems I’ll be cursed forever.”

* * *

Emma can’t decide whether it’s curiosity or compassion that’s winning out as she leads Killian back to her cottage.  Honestly, it’s a frustrating mixture of the two. 

He sighs as they walk through the front door. 

“Seems I’ll be cursed forever,” he says.  “Small price to pay, I suppose, for the lives I’ve taken.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  She reaches up, fingers playing with the hair the curls over his ears.  He exhales, heavy, and leans into her touch.  “You are _not_ cursed.”

“Swan, you can’t even heal the slightest bruise.  Meanwhile, your friend is nearly unconscious on the couch.”

She waves him off.  “Mary Margaret wasn’t kidding when she said David’s a big baby.”

Killian growls, and she can feel his irritation, rolling off him in waves as he paces across the floor.

“ _Emma_ ,” he says, dragging his fingers through his hair.  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  I _kill_ everything I touch.”

As much as she hurts for him, she can’t help but roll her eyes.  “And like _I’ve_ said before, you _drain_ everything you touch.  Sometimes that’s just as necessary as healing.  I’m sure you’ve helped people before.  You helped _me_ in that alley.”

He comes to a stop in front of her, and looks down, eyes searching, almost childishly earnest.  “Nonsense, love.  I did nothing for you that you couldn’t have done yourself.”  Then, voice smaller, “I was just angry.  I wanted to frighten them.”

Emma frowns, but she doesn’t reply.  It’s clear that words won’t convince him, the self-deprecating _bastard_.  So she drags him back to her house by the cool plastic of his prosthetic, intent on branding the truth – that he is _not_ the monster he thinks he is – into his body with the drag of her teeth, the determined press of her fingers, the slide of her chest against his.  And as she does, Killian seems to know exactly what she’s saying, answering her wordless appeals with actual words – panted, broken gibberish mostly; _God_ he’s precious – as they draw one another over the edge.

* * *

It’s near afternoon by the time they’ve settled, legs hopelessly snarled in the sheets.  Killian watches as Emma takes to fiddling with his ring again, tapping at the designs, dragging the smooth metal over her fingertips, warming it with her touch.  He gazes at her intently.  A bright shaft of crisp, winter light pours in from the window over the bookshelf to the left of the bed.  It shines over half of her face, emphasizing the shimmer in her hair and the flecks of gold in her eyes.

He’s never considered himself a sentimental man.  After all of these years, naught but the rings he’s collected – emblems of the terrible life he’d once lived, reminders of the murders he’d committed – remain with him.  Even those begin to lose their appeal as he stares what he desperately hopes will be his future in the face.

“Emma,” he says.  “I’m sorry.”

She gnaws at the inside of her cheek, and stares at him with the sort of intensity that he’s come to realize is a sure sign that she’s trying desperately to _not_ roll her eyes.  She takes a deep breath, and he expects her usual lively diatribe about his apparently unacceptably low opinion of himself.

But she throws him off guard, as per usual.

“For what?” she asks.

He frowns.  “For David, love.  And – ”

“Not your fault _and_ he asked for it.  Literally.  Next?”

It’s so matter-of-fact that he laughs, despite himself.  “That I’ve so unceremoniously and unappreciatively foisted myself onto your lovely family.”

“Are you kidding?  You eat practically nothing, you live in a house they’re _already_ renting for free, and now you pretty much work for like zero dollars an hour.  Also, I would like to see you try to leave now that Mary Margaret’s practically adopted you.”

He shakes his head, and tries to pull away.  But she doesn’t let him, hanging onto Liam’s ring with a vice grip.

“Next?” she says, a challenge gleaming in her eyes.  There’s an edge in her tone, and he finds himself marveling at her as yet another wall of his crumbles beneath her feet.

“…I’m rubbish at compost?”

She laughs.  “You got me there.  But Killian, I swear to God, that is the beginning and _end_ of the list. “

She looks up at him, eyelashes fluttering, and his heart swells.  The radiator spits out a puff of heat, and the curtain flutters, the light catching her eyes just so.  The sunshine in her smile reaches straight down into his chest, and his blood runs sluggish and warm in his ears.  He’s never felt quite so content.  Which is what spurs him to reach for his neck.  He smiles at her, softly, as he pulls the chain that holds Liam’s ring over his head.

Her smile falters.  _Wall for wall_ , he thinks.

“Oh God,” she says, leaning up on her elbow.  “What – ”

His smile widens.  “Hush, Swan.  This isn’t what you think it is.”

She eyes him askance before she lies back beside him, hesitantly reaching towards him, opening her hand.  He presses the chain into her palm, gently curling his fingers over hers.

“Emma,” he sighs.  “I’ve lived far longer than any man should.  There were moments when I wasn’t sure I could bear it, when I wasn’t sure I could survive another day.  But I did, and it’s because of this ring.  The hope that, one day, I could make my brother proud.”

She takes the chain, grasps it with both of her fists, but she hesitates, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. 

"Killian,” she says, voice wavering.  “I can't take this from you.  It means too much to you."

"It’s alright, Swan. I like to think it will never be far.  Besides, what hope could it possibly give, now that I have you?"  He can feel his face heat, the tips of his ears turn red as he looks down, bashful.  “At least, I _think_ I have you.”

She smiles, and her eyes are a bit wet, but there’s mirth in her voice as she answers, “Don’t be ridiculous.  Of _course_ you have me.  Now help me get my hair out of the way.”

He laughs, and complies, pulling her hair over her shoulder as she slips the chain over her neck.  She cradles the ring between her fingers once more

"You know, I’ve never asked before.  What are these? These little flower things.”

He can hardly help the grin on his face as he watches her tongue peek out from behind her lips as she squints at the ring. 

"Those are amaranths, love," he says.

"Amaranthus?”  She turns her head from one side to the other.  “But aren’t those, you know, kind of drape-y and rope-y looking?  This looks like a violet or something.”

"Aye, but these are not amaranthus.  They are _amaranths_ , the undying flower.  Plain in appearance, but fiercely envied by the rose, which lasts only a season.”  He pauses, scratching at the back of his neck.  “At least, that's the tale my brother told me. The amaranthus is quite real, but the amaranth lives only in the mind. The point being that it lives there forever."

Emma hums.  "An undying flower, huh?"

“Aye, love.”

She considers him a moment, hesitant as she traces the gentle contours of the ring over and over again.  Then, with a faint smile, “That’s ironic.”

He smiles back.  “Darling, we’ve been flush with irony the moment I caught you cheating at Solitaire.”

She huffs, sleepily.  “Are you ever gonna get over that?”

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t reply.  She’s drifting, ring clenched in her fist as she yawns.  So he simply watches her instead, as she and the last light of day alike, fade to dusk.


	5. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood. Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities. Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half. In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say again how much your comments mean to me. Every single one has me near tears, I'm just so grateful for the response. Just one more part after this! As ever, my love and devotion to seastarved, is-that-what-it-is, and high-seas-swan (all on tumblr) for their help and encouragement with this fic.

Weeks pass, and the landscape settles into a particularly harsh, though beautiful, winter.  Ice storm after ice storm coats the bare branches and the pine needles in crystal.  It traps the lot of them at home more often than Emma would like.  Not that she’s keen on going back to the city anyways.  And neither is Killian, the both of them content to test their fate-bound relationship where no one can see. 

The peace that’s settled is surreal, though it’s punctuated by odd little events.  For instance, every Friday evening, Killian – plied with rum and caramel candies and Emma’s fingers pressing gentle promises into the base of his spine – tests his power on David.  She makes light of it best she can, but a shadow still passes over his eyes when, inevitably it seems, David throws himself dramatically on the couch after the test fails. 

She can’t blame him.

“I can’t blame you,” Emma says. 

It’s a particularly frigid Saturday morning, and there’s a fresh coating of snow on the ground.  They’re huddled by the fireplace in her cottage, hot drinks cooling rapidly beneath their chilled fingertips.

Killian arches a brow, his jaw twitching.  “Eh, Swan?  Giving up the mantra, then, are we?”

She gives him a look.  “Don’t be a jerk.  I’m just being honest.  Don’t they think that it’s proportional to how long you’ve been alive?  Maybe like one day per year or something?  So only a million more days.”

He laughs, despite his dark mood, and scratches behind his ear.  “So I’ve heard…you could be right, love.”

Emma watches as he shifts, shadows falling back over his face even as he smiles.  As much as she wishes he could be free of it, doubt sits heavy in the pit of her stomach.  She wonders if this will be enough, if _she_ will be enough, or if – without the promise of losing this thing he hates – he’ll grow restless.  Even as he sits beside her, he stares somewhere past the fire, into who knows how many centuries into the future or past.  His back arches, his fingers twitch, his breathing is irregular.  She itches to comfort him, to hold onto him, but he’s pulled away before.  In the darkness, when the quiet seems overwhelming, when they’re both wrestling with their demons.

She’s not sure what to do.  She never is, but the more he fidgets, the more _she_ does, so she tosses the blanket off her shoulders and hops to her feet.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says.

He looks up at her, a bit incredulous.  “A walk?”

She plasters on a smile.  “Yep.”

An hour or so later, despite his weak protests – and despite the cold, for that matter – they’re walking along her old, familiar path, heavy boots crunching loudly beneath them.  It settles her, to a point, and she grasps his prosthetic, swinging it between them, hoping the gentle rhythms might settle him as well.

They’re turning the bend to her meadow when he laughs.  Low, skating on a timber that she can feel straight down to her toes.

“What?” she says.

Killian waves her off.  “S’nothing, Swan.”

She nudges his shoulder with hers.  “Seriously, what?”

He stops them just as they reach the edge of her meadow, and turns to face her.  His eyes roam over her face, followed closely by his fingers.  They’re gloved yet, but she can still feel the heat of him through the leather, as he draws into the skin of her jaw.

“You’re a bloody siren, love,” he says.  “It’s _freezing_ , and yet somehow you’ve managed to lure me out of the house.”

She scoffs.  “Didn’t you live in New England before this?”

“Aye, but darling, the forests here seems made out of glass, for all this ice.”

“Well, next time, I’ll just leave you at home.”

_Home_.  She can tell it catches him off guard.  But he recovers with a grin.  “Don’t you know by now, Swan?  I’d follow you anywhere.” 

He means to joke.  She can see it in the flash of his dimples, the crookedness of his smile.  But it comes out a bit heavier than he probably intended.  Doubt still gnaws in her gut, the sincerity almost too much, but he leans back, just as she opens her mouth to…say _something_.

“Even if I end up with a sore case of frostbite,” he says.

She rolls her eyes affectedly, grateful for the out.  “You’re so dramatic, it’s ridiculous.”

“I’ve already lost one hand, darling.”  He wiggles his fingers under hers.  “Not too keen on losing another.”

Emma laughs, throaty, catching on a cough as the cool air bites at her lungs.  “Alright, _alright_.  You stay here and whine.  Let me just go say hi to my tree for a second, and then we can go be cliché and snuggle by the fireplace again.”

She leans up, and kisses him wetly on the cheek.  He turns into it, but she pulls back before his lips can touch hers, laughing at his affronted expression before she trudges down the way.  She stumbles through a deceptively deep pile of snow, just barely righting herself, though not before a streak of white poofs all the way up her right leg. 

“I can hear you laughing!” she shouts, accusingly.

“Guilty as charged, Swan,” he shouts back.

Emma shakes her head, grumbling to herself as she crosses the last several yards between herself and the tree.

“Hey there, old fella,” she says.  She reaches out, thumbing at the slash marks.  Some of the older ones are barely visible, glazed over with sap and fresh peels of bark.  The most recent are still raw, bleeding clear and viscous.

“In hindsight, this was kind of ridiculous.”

She drags her fingers over the tallies once more, hands now sticky with resin, and then reaches down into her boot, pulling out the knife in her boot.

“Fifty years,” she whispers.  And then, rather unceremoniously, she drops the knife at the base of the tree, smiling at the satisfying _thunk_ as it drops through the snow and onto an exposed root.  “Not anymore.”

* * *

Killian watches with a fond smile as Emma runs her hands over the tree.  He imagines that her fingers must be positively frozen.  Not to mention her toes, which are surely paying the price for her graceless little stumble.  As she pulls her knife from her boot, he makes to call out to her, to jokingly entreat her to leave the poor thing be.  But the words catch in his throat…

Killian Jones is all too aware of how the world works.  How time swells and retreats, like a mocking, resinous tide in the face of eternity.  He’s watched time and again as people, cities, _empires_ have risen and fallen.  Oftentimes in a mad dash, without warning.  But as the other shoe drops at his feet, he curses fiercely as the realization sinks in – the shadows creeping at his back, the heavy feeling of unease that drove him from place to place, the vaguest of rumors concerning his past in his wake.  The pieces of the puzzle all fall into place with two words, whispered at his back with chilling detachedness.

“Got you.”

His blood chills, from his head down to his feet.  He heaves a terrible a sigh as he turns on his heel, the years that have preceded him flickering through his mind with each creaking movement, with each shuffle of his feet and with each audible grind of his jaw.  He steels himself against it, but Killian can’t help but reel when he meets the familiar old gaze.

“Gold,” Killian says, the ease in his tone belying the sinking in his belly, the racing of his heart.

Gold cackles, and Killian’s left wrist throbs, as if no time has passed since the duel that pushed him into self-exile.  Only…

“Aged a bit since last I saw you,” Killian notes.  “Even demons have their match, I suppose.”

Gold looks pointedly over his shoulder.  “So it would seem.”

Killian growls, seeing red as he wrenches his glove off with his teeth and reaches for the man’s miserable little neck.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Gold snickers.  Killian feels a sharp pressure just beneath his sternum.  He looks down to see a glittering steel blade, the hilt gilded, as ever, with luxurious bands of gold.

A hot, heavy breath rushes out his nose, and Killian grits his teeth against the urge to just take his chance.  But the blood in his vision clears when he hears Emma’s voice ring loud and clear through the meadow.

“Killian!” she shouts, and he can hear her heavy footfalls and she rushes to his side.  “What the _hell_?”

“Emma,” he says, quietly, unable to tear his eyes away from Gold’s impish gaze.  “Why don’t you go back to the house, love.”

“Yeah, right,” she snarls, even as Gold laughs,

“Oh, I don’t think so, dearie.  See, I’ve been following you for quite some time.  You didn’t think I’d let you live after what you did to me?”

Killian knocks the blade away from his chest.  “After what _I_ did to _you_?”

“You betrayed me, Mr. Jones.  I could have killed you all those years ago.  But I simply couldn’t pass up the chance to kill you in front of your soulmate.  So I watched, and I waited, gave a nudge here and there.  I must say, I’m going to enjoy watching her wither, watching that fire fade away.”  His eyes slide from him to Emma.  “I imagine the show you put on with my men in that alley way is only the beginning.”

Emma gasps.  “Those were… _your_ idiots?”

Gold laughs, the sharp, bitter sound of it echoing throughout the meadow.  “Indeed.  The timing is positively serendipitous, considering I’ve recently bid farewell to my own immortality.”

Emma scoffs.  “ _You_ have a soulmate?  That’s gross.”

Gold’s deceptively pleasant demeanor takes a wicked turn into insidious.  A fire sparks behind his eyes, and Killian has the urge to push Emma behind him, if he weren’t certain that would only propel her forward.  Killian shuffles on his feet, his mind racing.  He thinks hard on his history with this man.  He’s begged the universe for death before, but he can feel Emma’s fingers curling tight in the leather of his jacket.

_I’m not done_ , he thinks.

“A deal,” Killian says.  “If we can come to an accord – ”

“I think _not_ ,” Gold says, and he takes a step back, at which point Killian notices the swords dangling from the man’s belt.  Dread settles low in his stomach.  “The time for making deals has long since passed.  But let it not be said that I am without honor.  Say farewell to Miss Swan – ”  Gold pulls a sabre from his belt and tosses it at Killian’s feet.  “ – and then we shall finish our duel.”

“Not without _dramatics_ either,” Emma snarks.  “What’s stopping me from shooting you in the face?”

Killian knows she’s unarmed, but he plays along.  “What, indeed?”

Gold laughs again, and it’s so shrill, Killian’s surprised the glass coating the trees doesn’t shatter in its wake.  “Ah, but I know something you don’t know.  Your precious benefactors, the Nolans.  Well, lets just say they’re a bit tied up at the moment.  And if I don’t return, well it shan’t be _you_ that’s doing the shooting, dearie.” 

Killian straightens, his blood draining from his face.  Emma, though, blunt as ever, rolls her eyes.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she says.  “So we drop you now, they die.  Killian drops you in this fight, they die.  You drop _us_ – well, we’re dead anyway.  What’s the point?”

“The point – ” Gold looks at Killian, and mocks, “ – _love_ , is to take back what he stole from me.”

“Your _sanity_?”

The fire in Gold’s eyes dissipates, as suddenly as it appeared, and the treacherous curl in his lip snaps back to disinterest as he drops one his blades at their feet.  “My pride.  Now run along.  Say your farewells.  I have waited three _centuries_ for this.  I can wait a few moments more.”

Killian seethes, but Emma scoops the sword up out of the snow, and yanks him back towards the center of the meadow.

“Honestly,” she says, as they stop near the center of the clearing.  “What.  The.  Fuck.”

“Well said, love.  But I’m afraid there’s nothing for it.”

Emma leans on one foot and then the other, looking back at Gold, then up at him, her eyes darting as she chews on her lip.  “I could jump in – ”

“Swan – ”

“ – whack him on the back of his stupid head – ”

“Emma – ”

“ – although who knows how many _more_ idiots he has – ”

“Emma, _please_.”

He reaches out, his fingers grazing over the swell of her cheeks, then up into her hair, threading through it before he reaches back to press at her lips.  She sighs, and drops the sword back to the ground, one hand roaming over his chest while the other buries in the hair at the back of his neck, her nails dragging nonsense into base of his skull.

“My love,” he says, and he pauses to swallow, hoping to keep the tremors in his chest out of his voice.  “There’s _nothing_ for it.  Your family is in danger.”

Emma pulls him down, pressing her forehead against his.  “I know he is.”

Killian has to bite the inside of his cheek to suppress the catch in his breath.  So he kisses her instead, and he can taste the desperation on her lips, can feel it in the way her tongue curls around his, the way her teeth drag against his lower lip.  She pulls away to take a breath.  He opens his mouth, to say… _anything_ , really.  But Emma reaches up, grabs hold of the lapels of his jacket, and pushes him backwards, though she doesn’t let go.

“Alright,” she says, breathless.  She licks her lips, and he’s desperate to lean back in, but she holds him steady.  “What are we dealing with here?”

Killian snarls.  His teeth begin to ache as he grinds his teeth – back and forth, and back again.

“A madman,” he says.

“ _No_ , I mean, can he still…you know.”

Red leaks into his vision, and rage boils in his blood.  The sting of the humiliation, as Gold had compelled him to lose the swordfight, the jeering laughter of those around him, the unfamiliar falter in his steps as he’d desperately tried to move with some semblance of grace.  But he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_ , the whisper in his mind, telling him to lower his sword, to trip over his own feet, to fall to his knees. It all comes clawing back.

“Killian.”  Emma’s hands reach up for his collar, and the jerk of her fingers pulls him back to himself, though tremors still race up and down his spine.

“Can he still control?”

Killian shakes his head, and answers her, quietly, “He’s aged.  Five years.  Ten, maybe.”

Emma chews at her lip, and pulls him closer.  “Are you sure?  Couldn’t it be a trick?  Why come here now?  Why wait?”

“I…”  Grim reality sets in, and her questions fall on deaf ears.  The rage calms as he stares determinedly at her lips.

“…what could he possibly want?  _How_ did he know we were here?”

She pauses to take a breath.  Then, whispering, “What am I supposed to do?”

There’s a plea on her tongue, he can tell, but she swallows it, the lean muscles of her throat jumping.  He curses every god he can think of for tying her fate to his.  He thinks of the first afternoon he’d seen the Storybrooke Food Pantry, wonders if it would have been different if he hadn’t gone in.  Or if he would have been drawn to her eventually.  If, in any scenario, in any lifetime, it would all come down to this.

“Live,” he says.  He drags his thumb, gently, along her cheek, his fingers reaching up into the fine hairs waving around her ear.  “ _Please_ , Emma.  No matter what.”

Killian leans down, her fingers in a vice grip at the nape of his neck.  His forehead falls against hers, and her exhale is hot, wet against his lips.  But he doesn’t kiss her, he just leans into her, and she into him.

“Killian Jones,” she says, and he can feel the brush of her lips against his.  “I swear to God.  If you die – ” 

“Not planning on it, Swan,” he interrupts.  “Just promise me…”

She stares up at him, green eyes alight with fire.  She’s beautiful, and she’s fierce, and he means to press forward just so, to entreat her tongue with his, to speak oaths of love and life into her mouth.

But Gold startles them out of their embrace.

“This is all very touching,” he says.  “But I must insist you take your stance, or _die_ like the coward you are.”

Killian growls, and leans back, fury sparking once more.  Gold stands naught but a few yards away, sword held loosely in his hand.  He looks on with mild disinterest, but when his gaze slides to Emma, and his lips curl into a wretched facsimile of a smile, Killian digs his fingernails into the palm of his hand.  The cold in the air reaches straight down to the base of his spine, and rattles him loose.

“Kill me if you can, _Gold_ ,” Killian spits, and he holds the sword aloft.  “But know that I am nothing if not a _true_ man of honor.  Without your power, you have _nothing_.”

Gold grins vacantly, and it does nothing to unease the shiver crawling up his back.  The man’s grin falls into a snarl as he looks once more at Emma. 

“Don’t even _think_ about interfering,” he says, and she steps away, a scowl on her face as she retreats towards the tree line.

Looking away from Emma, it’s like losing his hand all over again.  But he can’t afford to watch her, so he tightens his grip on the hilt of his blade, turns up his chin, and faces his opponent.

They circle one another – he and Gold – light sheets of snow falling around them, their boots kicking it up at their feet.  Killian tries to put the sun behind him.  It’s muted by the clouds, but it’s still bright, glinting off the curved edges of their blades.  He squints against it, and turns his body away.  But Gold advances, clearly of the same mind.

“Seems you’ve taken a lesson or two,” Killian taunts.  He arcs the sword a bit, swinging it in his hand, catching the light and throwing it in Gold’s eyes.  “You never were a proper swordsman.”

But Gold only smiles, the sadistic bastard, silver sunshine drowning in the black of his eyes.  “May I remind you that, last we crossed blades, you lost your hand.”

“Aye, and now I’ll be having yours.”

At this, Killian lunges.  Surprise flickers over Gold’s face, but he recovers, parrying easily, stepping to Killian’s left, pushing his advantage.

For a few moments, Killian tries to keep track of Emma out of the corner of his eye.  She stays back, and it seems she’s safe.  But he wouldn’t put it past Gold to have any number of his minions lurking in the woods.  It seems Emma’s had the same idea, as she skirts slowly along the edge of the meadow.  She’s moving slowly, footsteps calculated, mechanical almost.  It stirs something in his belly, as though he’s sinking.  But he can’t quite pinpoint it

He loses track of her as Gold becomes more and more vicious, pressing inward and onward.  Killian allows himself to appear as though he’s draining – a sloppy step here, an imperfect parry there, playing to the man’s ego.  It’s clear that Gold is losing himself to his anger, and there are moments when Killian truly struggles, his hand trembling, his knees quivering as their blades clash. 

But with one, particularly foolhardy lunge, Killian catches the demon’s sword on the brace for his prosthetic, spins to the side, and disarms him as he falls to the ground, the snow flying up around him.

“Yield,” Killian says, holding the sword at Gold’s throat.  Centuries ago, he would not have hesitated to cut the man’s miserable head off.  But – and he spares a glance for Emma – he’s killed his last.  He’ll knock the poor sod unconscious and drag him to the nearest police station, if he has to.

“Never,” Gold says.  But it’s neither plea nor bravery.  He seems bored, smug…

_Younger_.

The years melt away from the man’s face.  Killian doesn’t know how, but the illusion slips away.  He nearly drops his sword, but he holds fast, a voice within screaming, _screaming_ with the voices of all those that had been taken from him, and all those he stands to lose – _kill him, kill him._

Killian grits his teeth, and lifts his blade. 

The imp of a man doesn’t even look at him as he speaks, casually brushing the snow from his jacket as he says, “Stop.”

Killian stops, and the blood drains from his face, blade still aloft.  He looks to Emma, but she remains at the wood’s edge.

_Don’t even think about interfering._

Gold leaps to his feet, a familiar, high-pitched, screeching laughter skittering across the meadow as he does.

“Oh, yes,” Gold says.  “It must all be coming to you now.”

Gold circles him, and Killian breathes heavy through his nose, jaw cracking, apprehension flaring as he moves from sight.

“But how could I have tricked you?” Gold mocks, voice swinging from high to low, and back again, mania in the pluck of his lips as he mimics.  “How could I have been so foolish?  Woe is me, the centuries old immortal – ”  His voice falls again at the word _immortal_ , suddenly menacing.  “ – with the oh so _terrible_ ability to kill those he touches.”

Gold comes to a stop in front of him, catching Killian’s eye.  His stomach is rolling, his blood is roiling, and his shoulder is beginning to burn with the weight of the sword.

“Only _you_ could think of it as anything but a curse,” Killian spits.  He struggles with all his might against the hold.  His vision swims against the effort, and he can feel bile rising in his throat.  But his eyes jump once more to Emma.  His desperation convinces him that his fingers twitch, but he knows he’s grasping at straws, that he’s staring death in the face, just as he’d decided to turn away. 

“Well, you’re quite useless now,” Gold says.

_Useless_.

It echoes in his mind, and his fury sparks.  His toes curl, the effort strewing black spots across his eyes.

“A worn out _tool_ ,” Gold says.

His shoulder creaks, he can feel it, hear the grind in his bones as it shifts, just a fraction, unnoticed by the villain before him as he picks at a bit of slush at his elbow.

“I’ve had my fun with you, but I’m afraid your time is up, dearie.”

His hips twist a bit, and his feet sink into the snow.  Blood rushes in his face, hot and thick, and he can barely see around the moisture in his eyes, can barely breathe.

“Just as it was Milah’s.  And soon Emma’s.”

Fury, desperation, fear, they melt away.  That, or they build to such a roar that he’s become deaf to all else.  He can feel Gold’s control slip, and his muscles begin to slacken. 

“Don’t ever speak their names again,” Killian says, softly, venomously.

Gold’s spell break, and Killian’s knees very nearly buckle beneath him.  He steadies himself, and brings the sword down.

But it’s seconds too late, the weakness in his shoulder, the weariness in his muscles, giving the Gold just the window he needs to lift his sword with a flick of his wrist, and to run Killian through. 

It’s a quick swipe of the man’s blade.  The pain doesn’t even register, not at first.  Not even as he falls to his knees.  Nor as hunches over, blood spilling out onto his hand, and onto the snow.  Everything around him seems brighter, almost impossibly so, the contrast of red and white burning into his eyes.

So he closes them, and leans back.  He registers, faintly, that he may be laying down.  A few moments pass – or is it minutes? hours, days, _weeks_? – and then Emma is kneeling beside him.  Oddly enough, it’s her presence that knocks the world back on his axis, and he lets out a scream when the dull throbbing in his belly ratchets up to a searing agony.

* * *

_“What did it feel like?”_

_Killian looks up at her.  She’s balancing on her tip toes on the middle rung of the ladder, reaching for an old tool kit tucked away in one of the out buildings.  It’s a bit musty, and it smells of plywood and damp straw.  Up until now, Killian had been alternately sneezing and peering wide-eyed at the array of odds and ends hung, piled, stacked around them.  Honestly, even she doesn’t know what half this crap is._

_“What did_ what _feel like?”_

_Emma pauses in her fruitless search for the kit, and leans back on the arches of her feet, her fingers curling around the rung nearest her face._

_“Being…”  She trails off, swaying a bit from side to side as she hems.  She repeats, “Being…you know,_ controlled _.”_

_He frowns, the muscles in his jaw twitching.  His eyes darken, and he falls back into the past, somewhere she can’t follow._

_So she adds, quickly.  “Nevermind, you don’t have to – ”_

_“No,” he interrupts.  “No, it’s alright, love.”_

_He falls silent for several long moments, nothing but the sound of their breathing surrounding them.  The cold of the ladder is seeping into her fingers, but she holds still, waiting._

_“Dreaming,” he says, quietly, at length.  “Like I was dreaming.  Running, but not sure why.  Willing my legs to go faster, frustrated when they don’t, but unable to change speed or direction.”_

_Killian looks back up at her, takes a step forward.  “Felt damn good to wander.  To go where I wanted when I wanted.  To run – fast or slow, however I pleased.  Never thought I’d grow tired of it.”_

_He takes another step forward, and reaches out, hand sliding over the wool of her coat at her waist, around to the small of her back, further still up the ridge of her spine.  “That is, until I met you.”_

_Until I met you._

_Like I was dreaming._

“Like I was dreaming.”

Emma repeats these words to herself, remembering how, that same night, Killian had lain his head on her chest.  How he had told her, in a quiet rush, how he’d lost sight of the line between his free will and Gold’s sinister influence.  Like a macabre marionette, pulled and pulled until he’d broken.

She’d cried for him then.

She rages for him now.

She breathes, slow and steady, even as her blood rushes hot through her veins.  She shuffles along the edge of the wood, feeling as though she’s suspended on rope.  Mechanical, uncharacteristic movements.  Jerky almost, though precise, as she stalks along.

God, she can hardly fucking _believe_ that this is happening.  She wonders, if you live long enough, if history is just bound to repeat itself.

It’s like sensory overload, watching two men – likely a millennium between them – fight ancient battles with ancient weapons.  Time stutters and grinds – a vicious gyre, rolling heavy from moment to moment – and as she watches Killian lift his sword, and pause mid-air, she wonders if she’s been plunged into the past, or if she’s looking at the future.  She wants to tear at her hair, wants to plunge the knife she’d left at the base of the old beech straight into Gold’s back, a swift punch to the mouth would do the bastard some good too.

But she’s stuck, pacing like a record, and everything she’d imagined about how it felt – _willing my legs to go faster, frustrated when they don’t_ – it pales in comparison to the helplessness she feels in this moment.

She doesn’t like it.  And honestly, _fuck_ Gold, his power, his deceit.

Emma grits her teeth, and wills herself to move, to _move_ , towards the beech.  She can picture the knife at its base, can almost feel it in her hands as she clenches her fists hard enough to break skin.  The steps are agonizingly slow, and she feels nauseous.  The strings of Gold’s control stretch and slide, and it’s a painful burn at the base of her neck, at her spine, in the soles of her feet.  But she moves with desperation, or at least as much as she can muster. 

Gold circles Killian again and again, and each time – _left…right…left…right_ – she wonders if it will be the last. 

(She knows it’s futile.)

(Oh but, how she _knows_ it’s over.  Did she ever _really_ have him?)

She stops in her tracks when she sees Killian falter, when the control appears to snap, and the faint winter light catches on the arc of his blade as he slashes downward.  Emma can feel the moment the control fades, the way it slips off her shoulders like a second skin.  Snow flies up under the heels of her boots as she all but sprints towards the tree.

Two steps.  Three, maybe, before the whorl of purple-gray light falling from Killian’s blade pauses, and quivers with the force of Gold’s sword to his sternum.

Emma has seen people die before.  Each time, she could feel it.  Like the flame of a candle between her fingertips – hot and sharp one moment, cool and dark the next.  But now – oh God, _now_ – she can _feel_ the blade tear through her flesh, just as surely as it tears through his.  She gasps, and nearly stumbles to her knees, hand clutching at her chest, bunching the fabric of her shirt in her fingers.

“Killian,” she says, and it’s hardly more than a whisper.  The pain flaring in her sternum, the red leaking into her vision, breath hot and viscous in her chest as Killian falls to his knees.  Desperation settles in the pit of her stomach, and she takes a step towards him.  But she falters when Gold floats into the periphery.  The red creeping in fades, replaced by a sudden and vicious clarity.

His face – it’s… _younger_ , somehow.  The expression – callous boredom.  Emma bites her lip, and a warm trickle of copper slides down her throat.

“I’m going to – ” Her breath hitches as she wrenches and pulls at her clothes, the pain in her chest ratcheting up, _up_ as she finishes through her teeth, “ – _kill_ you.”

The bastard _laughs_ in her face, and she nearly lunges for him, but she can feel his dark influence yank down on her shoulders, pressing painfully on her shoulder blades.  She expects him to taunt, but his twisted expression falls back into boredom, a touch of curiosity in the way he tilts his head.

“Stand on one leg,” he says.

She does.  And it’s almost laughably innocuous – but there are terrifying, vile promises in the way the muscles of her thighs begin to burn after a few moments.  Tears spring to her eyes, rage prickling at the back of her neck.

“Don’t you see?” he says, and he nods at Killian behind her.  “You’ve lost.”

Her leg falls to the ground, and while something in her rears at the thought of playing the part of the puppet, that longs rip Gold’s miserable head off, something larger bids her turn around.  It wars within her – for a few long, lonely moments – as the villain before her disappears into the woods, and the man behind her fades.

But then, as another jolt of pain shudders up her spine, she can feel Killian’s ring slide along its chain under her shirt, and she can almost feel his breath on her face, the night he’d slipped the chain from his neck to hers –

_They are amaranths…plain in appearance, but fiercely envied by the rose, which lasts only a season._

_Only a season._

– like he was making a promise.

She curses, violently, and she runs to Killian.  Anger, fear, vengeance, they fall away, and she _runs to him._

“Emma.” He says her name on a gasp when she falls beside him, gazing up at her even as he writhes.  “It’s alright.”

“No,” she says.  She tangles one of her hands with his, the other reaching up to his face, thumb pressing into the tears that trail down his cheeks.  “ _No_.  You can’t leave me.  You _can’t_.”

“Emma, please – ”  he pleads.  Though for what, she’s not sure, as he arches with a groan.  She reaches down towards his belly, hand hovering over his wound.  And she knows, she _knows_ , all the willpower in the world could not force her hand to heal him.  She gave it up.  To be with him.

_And now he’s leaving._

She could call the police, call for CareFlight or – fuck, _something_.  But he’s fading fast, skin turning ashen, lips chapped, eyes unfocused as his breathing shallows.  It would be a waste of these precious last minutes.

_Last minutes…_

“No, no, no,” she chants, fingers sliding gently on the blood-soaked leather around the wound.

He coughs, a strangled noise, and reaches up, pressing his knuckles against her cheek.  It startles her, and her eyes flick up to his.  “ _Please_.  Just look at me.  _Look_ at me, Emma.”

As her fingers, now bloodied, slide into his hair, he adds, nothing more than a whisper, less even, words nearly lost on a stiff breeze.  “Don’t look away.”

It’s the last coherent thought that comes out of his mouth.

Tears blur her vision, falling in hot, thick rivulets along her cheeks, along the divots of her chin.  Emma can tell he’s looking straight through her, but she heeds him, staring into his eyes as she draws her desperation along his brow, his jaw, the curve of his ear.

“You have to – ” Her voice catches, and she leans down, lips a second’s hesitation from his.

_Stay_ , she thinks.

A sob heaves in her chest, and she closes the distance, pressing her lips against his.

* * *

There is a new barrier between Killian and the world.  Not unlike the emotional one he’s worked years to erect.  Those walls that he’d firmly believed cushioned him from the vagaries of a life as a powerful, immortal vagabond. 

It’s different now, though.  He feels he is separate the world entirely, a viscous obstruction between them – grinding, slithering, _creeping_ between he and Emma until all he can hear is a vile _whir_ , and all he can see is a blurring spot of gold and emerald on the blackening horizon of what he’s certain is his death.

He’s slipping, spiraling, and his breath stills in his chest…

But not before he can feel lips pressed against his own.  Warm and wet, they’re like an anchor.  And though centuries, _centuries_ , beat an ancient story against the inside of his skull, they slip away, until all that is left is Emma – _his Emma_ – and the way she breathes into him as he dies.


	6. Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which soulmates are rare, and those that have them stop aging at adulthood. Rarer still – and dangerously conspicuous – are those that have special abilities. Immortality and powers alike fade when soulmates come in close proximity with their other half. In which Emma’s touch heals, and Killian’s kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, folks, this is the end. Thank you all so much for taking this journey with me. I am so grateful to everyone who read, gave kudos, and commented. I will cherish you all forever. One day, perhaps, I will revisit this universe. As ever, my love and devotion to seastarved, is-that-what-it-is, and high-seas-swan (all on tumblr) for their help and encouragement with this fic.

Emma counts. 

She counts from one up to ten, and then back down again.  Her heart pounds arrhythmically in her chest, but she counts on a steady beat, fearing that the moments she stops… _he’ll_ stop.  Bleeding, breathing, _living_. 

She’d begun the moment her lips touched his.

_One._

He’d been as pale as the snow around him, as stark a contrast to the blood seeping from his back.

_Two._

She felt she’d imagined the spark of warmth on her lips, the heat she felt drain from her to him.  But the voices in her head – the chorus of the world’s collective agony that had faded the longer Killian was at her side – they’d built up to such an unbearable zenith as her lips lingered on his.  She could feel blood dripping down the back of her throat as she bit down on the inside of her cheek.

_Three._

Then, suddenly, there had been nothing.  _Nothing_.  The last, latent whispers she hadn’t realized had clung to her until now – the cries of those in pain, something in them reaching out to something in her, begging to be healed – were silenced.  It was gone.  Her power… _gone_.  She could feel the immortality dropping from her shoulders, could feel the weight of the decades peel away as the tears streamed freely down her face, as she carded her fingers through his hair again and again.

 _Four_.

The world had never been so quiet.  A vesper hush.  A long pause, caught at the end of a stuttered, heaving breath.  Not hers, though.  _Not hers_. 

_Five._

But his.  _His_ breath.  Rushing back into his chest with such force that his back bowed up from the earth.  He sputtered, and the unsettling quiet shattered.  She sobbed and he gasped, arching and keening and squirming against the merciless pain of being wrenched back to life.  Emma has seen it before, with men and women she’d found teetering just over the edge of death.  She’d wanted to ease him through it.  But she was helpless to the power of her cries.

_Six._

To the power of her grief.

_Seven._

To the power of her _relief_.

_Eight._

Minutes, hours, _days_ , Emma hadn’t been sure.  But Killian’s whimpering had faded into sharp, uneven breaths – eyes screwed tightly shut in his unconsciousness – and she hadn’t the energy to do anything but lie on his chest, counting on every tenth beat.  Counting, _counting_ , until David and Mary Margaret found them, soaking wet and shivering in the cold.

_Nine._

Emma hadn’t been sure just how they managed to drag the both of them back to their house.  She’d been near hysteria, tired and drained beyond reason, and Killian had been out cold, each breath coming slower and steadier.  The journey back is disjointed in her mind, nothing but the harrowing space between the moments that she could cling to him.  Mary Margaret whispers comforts in her ear as they settle them in one of the bedrooms upstairs.  But it’s all white noise as Emma settles back over his chest, sobs wracking back up in her chest as she falls unwittingly into half-dream state, the smell of blood still heavy in the air, the nightmarish metronome in her head still ticking back and forth.

_Ten._

Back and forth.

* * *

Emma wakes to the feeling of fingers smoothing against her hair.  Even before she opens her eyes, she can tell they’re not Killian’s.  Comforting, though, as they draw up and down, over her ear and down her shoulder – a warm, steady touch as Killian’s heart beats soft and steady against her cheek.

“Emma,” Mary Margaret whispers.  “You awake, honey?”

Emma opens her mouth to reply, but her lips are chapped and her throat his wrecked.  She settles for nodding.

“Do you want me to go?”

Emma hesitates, but then shakes her head.

“Why don’t you sit up,” Mary Margaret says.  “Drink some water.”

Emma clings tighter to Killian’s shoulder, but she eases herself up at Mary Margaret’s gentle insistence.  As she sips at a tall glass of water – one of their many _dozens_ of Disney World cups – she notices that Killian is in a pair of sweats and a white cotton shirt.  She wonders briefly at how they managed to pull her away from him long enough to redress him.

And in so doing… _touching_ him.

“Wait,” she says, as it dawns.  “How…”

Mary Margaret reaches out, and grasps Killian’s wrist.  Emma holds her breath, then releases it on something caught between a laugh and a sob.

“Your power must have been hanging on by a thread.  If I had to guess, I’d say that you were – ” She gestures vaguely at Emma.  “ – and the he was – ”  And then gently shakes Killian’s wrist.  She looks so hopeful, so heartfelt, Emma has to look away.  Mary Margaret sighs, not unhappily, and adds, “Looks like _both_ your powers went out – for good this time – with kind of a bang.”

Emma figures that must be the understatement of the year, but she’s too busy being positively _overwhelmed_ by the last twenty-four hours to comment.  She sets her glass haphazardly on the nightstand, water sloshing over on her hand as she reaches up to grasp at Killian’s face.  She’s desperate to tell him, to see the look on his face when he realizes that it’s over.  That she was _right_.  He’s not cursed, not caught in the vortex of some cosmic punishment, just older than most, his power sticking to him with a centuries old tenacity.

_But not anymore._

“God,” she whispers.  “Will you just _wake up_ already?”

David appears in the doorway, shuffling awkwardly, eyes dancing around the room, landing on anything and _everything_ but her as she runs her fingers over his chest, the other threading through his hair.  David crosses his arms over his chest as he leans against the jamb. 

“Welcome to mortality, kid,” he says.

Emma smiles, but it falters the longer she rakes her eyes over Killian’s face.  The relief begins to wear away, replaced by images not unlike this.  Him, prone, blood on his hand, slick on his leather…

Mary Margaret seems to sense her distress, and reaches out, patting her shoulder, resuming the comforting motion of her hand over her hair.

“Emma,” she says.  “What happened?”

Emma drags her eyes away from Killian to look at Mary Margaret.  “Didn’t they tell you?”

David pushes himself off the jamb and sits in a chair by the bed.  “They?”

Emma frowns.  “Weren’t you, you know…being held hostage?”

The Nolans exchange a look of mirroring confusion. 

“Um, _no_ ,” David says.  “We’ve been on the back forty since this morning.  We came looking for you because it was past lunchtime and you weren’t answering your phone.  Better that than watch Mary Margaret raise a new barn, or something.”

“But…”  Emma trails off.  _Fucking Gold_.  Worry sparks, and flares into anger.  He’d played them from start to finish.  And he’d practically won.

 _Practically_ won, she reminds herself.

Emma recounts the tale as best she can, from Gold’s sudden appearance –

David gasps.  “Killian worked for _evil Xavier_ , basically.”

Mary Margaret rolls her eyes.  “ _David_ , oh my God.”

– to the horrific, rigged swordfight.  As the words pour out of her mouth, she can hardly believe it _herself_.  That she watched two centenarians fight to the death.  That Killian had lived, despite it all.  That they’re _free_.  Elation bubbles in her chest, though it’s quickly staunched by the echo of Gold’s control in her mind.  She shrugs her shoulders, stretching the joints around and around.  She itches to move, to _run_ –

_Just let me run, love.  If only for a while…_

“Shit,” she says, the words slipping out as Killian’s erratic behavior when they’d first met settles into sharp focus.  _Minutes_ under that demon’s thumb and she’s half a mind to run in random circles, if only to prove that she can do whatever the hell she wants.

Mary Margaret hums and David nods, adding an awed, “Yeah.”

Something like dread pulls at the hairs at the back of her neck, Gold’s sinister shadow still hanging overhead, but –  as she watches Mary Margaret reach out and pat Killian’s hand before she and David excuse themselves to whisper fiercely at one another down the hallway – in all the ways that matter at _this_ very moment, they’re...

“Free,” she whispers.  Of their power, of immortality.

And she’s fucking _terrified_.  Of losing him, of losing herself, but she buries it, and she curls around protectively around him.  She grasps tightly, _desperately_ at the ring around her neck, and falls into an uneasy slumber, the warm, steady puffs of Killian’s breath against the top of her head.

* * *

_Got you._

Killian wakes with a start, coughing as he gropes blindly in the night.  There’s a warm weight on his chest, and he’s set to scramble away when he feels the familiar weight of Emma’s long, chilly fingers against his cheeks.

“Hey, _hey_ ,” she says.  She reaches over and flicks on a lamp.  The room he’s in is strange to him, and his head is starting to spin, but he hones in on the drag of Emma’s hands over his neck, down his chest, tickling over his belly before reaching back up for his face. 

“It’s me,” she says.

“Emma,” he croaks.  His mouth is stale, and there’s a terrible metallic taste on the tip of his tongue.  His bones feel as though they’re made of stone, dreadfully heavy as he pulls himself into a sitting position.  Emma shifts along with him, apparently more than a little unwilling to move from his lap as her legs fall on either side of his hips.  She presses a glass of water in his hands and he drains it clear to the bottom.  Her hands wander, quicker than he can register, reaching again and again for the ring that dangles from her neck, then back again, anchoring in his hair as he blinks up at her.

“Fuck, I was…”  He trails off, licking at lips, so chapped they’re sore, pulsing with every beat of his heart.

“Dead?”  Emma finishes for him. 

They both wince.  The expression on her face – usually guarded, even in the quiet moments – is raw, open.  Her eyes are sunken and red-rimmed.  She’s grasping at him like he might disappear, drinking him in like it’s her last chance.  He sets the glass aside and reaches up, brushing the hair from her shoulder, tracing the curve of her jaw, thumbing at the corner of her mouth.

“Dead,” he whispers, and her face falls, so he adds, quickly, “But not anymore.”

Emma hums, and the devastation in her eyes gives way to…apprehension?  They fall into silence, and while it’s not exactly uncomfortable, it’s not pleasant either.  If only because of the way she’s looking at him, and the way he imagines he’s looking back.  The seconds drag along, and the apprehension dissolves into a familiar restlessness, echoing in the way she shifts atop him, thighs tensing and relaxing, then again as her fingers dance arrhythmically along his chest.

_Gold._

It’s like looking in a mirror, and his gut twists, his stomach clenches.  He thinks of everything he’d ever done, against his will.  Then he thinks of Emma, subjected to the same fate.  His blood heats.

“Oh, Emma,” he says, and he presses hard at her thigh with his blunted arm, his hand tangling in her hair.  “Did he hurt you?”

She looks pointedly at his chest, fingers grazing over his sternum, and he feels a phantom pain jolt through his body.

“Yes,” she says, simply.  She drags the fabric of his shirt up, just enough to uncover…nothing.  Only a faint line.  One that he may very well be imagining.  He grasps her fingers.

“But,” he starts, and he wonders why he didn’t notice sooner.  Too preoccupied, he imagines, with the woman draped over him, clinging to her as he presses down on the crushing feeling of claustrophobia that follows on the heels of Gold’s influence.

Still, he wonders aloud, dragging their joined hands along his chest, “How?”

Emma leans back, and looks down.  “I sort of…kissed you?”

He quirks a brow.  “Aye, that much I remember.”

She sighs, and looks back up at him.  “David was right about that whole _last hurrah_ thing.  The longer I kissed you, the colder I felt.  And then the _warmer_ you felt.  I was healing you, and at the same time, you were…”  She waves her free hand, searching, he knows, for something that won’t hurt him.  She finishes, lamely, “…draining.”

He knew it was coming, but still, he frowns, guilt surging, his breath hitching.  “It’s never worked on you before.”  He imagines it, pressing his fingers against her throat as he had countless others, falling to their knees before him.  What once was empowering, harrowing.

“God,” he says.  “ _Emma_ , what if – ”

She clamps a hand over his mouth.  “I know, but _stop_ it.  I don’t want to have to punch you in the face so soon after you died.” 

He smiles despite himself, his lips brushing against the skin of her palm.  She pulls her hand away, but she doesn’t venture far, fingers anchoring once more in the hair at the nape of his neck.

“And besides,” she pauses, takes a deep breath.  Then, quietly, “It’s gone.”

Killian frowns, brow furrowing.  “Gone?  What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ ,” she starts, and she finds his hand with hers, his wrist with the other.  “David and Mary Margaret dressed you.”

He wrinkles his nose, caught somewhere between embarrassment and indignation when realization sinks in.  And he says, voice pitching so low, even he hardly recognizes it,

“Touched me.”

She nods, her eyes shining.  And now that she’s said it, he can _feel_ it.  Or the lack of it.  The low hum that had coursed through his blood, pulsed in his fingertips.  The echo of voices in his mind, all the people he’s touched – still rasping along the ruined edges of the man he came to be, the man he came to hate – now dulled.  Though he could touch her before, he pulls his fingers from hers and presses at the line of her jaw.

“Say it again,” he begs, his voice cracking.

She smiles.  So radiantly, that he can’t help but laugh.  Regardless of everything that’s happened, everything that he fears _will_ happen, he laughs, and she laughs along with him, giggles really.  He feels like a child again, splashing in the waves under his mother’s watchful eye, the evening sunshine casting diamonds out in the bay.

“It’s _gone_ , Killian,” Emma says.  “Forever.”

“Forever,” he repeats.  And he kisses her.  It’s an unholy mess of teeth and tongue – a jumble of words falling from both their mouths as she trails her lips up his jaw, as he presses his tongue to the patch of skin just beneath her ear – but he can taste the promise on her lips.  Eternity has fallen away, its unforgiving, amaranthine grip crumbling before him as he clings to the woman he loves.

* * *

Several days pass, and relief begins to give way to the grudging acknowledgement of the shadow that yet hangs over their heads.  Drunk on his power, likely reveling in his success, Killian is certain they’ll have a months long reprieve from Gold and his vengeful machinations.  Emma, he knows, is not so certain, and in the dead of night, she drags her fingers through the hair on his chest, over the faint scar on his chest and then back again.  There’s a glint in her eyes when she does, liquid steel darkening the shades of green.  But she doesn’t say anything, content for the time being to curl around him, and he around her, still disbelieving that he’d fucked up so royally.

He’s plagued by nightmares, wakes up feeling like there’s string threaded through his flesh, knotted around his elbows and shoulders and knees, pulling him this way and that, pain erupting in his sternum, Emma’s hand slipping from his fingers, dark words of dark purpose spat in his ears.  Emma wakes him, and shushes him.  And he her, when her face crumples, when he can see the same nightmares staring back at him. 

It heals.  Wordlessly.  It’s always quiet, save for the whisper of his skin against hers.

David and Mary Margaret, on the other hand, talk incessantly.  They assure him again and again that he needn’t apologize, that they trust him, that they’d be willing to face his fate alongside him.

“That’s what family does,” they’d said.

Emma’s fingers curled in the loop of his belt, David’s hand on his shoulder, Mary Margaret’s impossibly genuine gaze – he hadn’t had the heart to protest.  In fact, he’d almost believed he _could_ stay, allowed himself to imagine it.

But now, as cold reality sets in along with another string of snowstorms, Killian wonders how he could be so selfish.  To stay, never mind the consequences.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  That he is _exactly_ that selfish.  Enough to take her wherever he wanders.  To never let go. 

It’s early in the morning on a Sunday, and Emma must sense it, feel it in the way he looks at her over his coffee.  She coaxes him outside, wrapping a scarf around his neck and pulling a hat over his ears.  He murmurs a protest or two, but they catch in his throat when he feels the tremor in her fingers.  

Once out the door, they trudge through shin deep snow, meandering the barren gardens with her arm looped in his.  He watches as she kicks at the snow – his darling Emma, _beautiful_ Emma, heart thudding in his chest.  The words – _we have to leave_ – are tripping on the tip of his tongue, falling silent each time he opens his mouth, lost on a wet puff of breath in the frigid air.  She looks so at home, so –

“Hey,” she says, gently.  “If you brood any harder, it’s going to start raining on us.”

He smiles, though it feels a mite out of place.  “Apologies, love.  Just…”

Emma stops, and turns to face him.  She reaches out, grasping the lapels of his coat.  She pulls him closer.  He can feel her breath fanning over his face, and not for the first time, he wonders at the years he spent without her, how in these moments, they feel so far away. 

“Just…” she echoes, and she tilts her head, eyes narrowing as she scrutinizes him. “Just thinking about how we’ve got to leave?”

Killian can’t help it.  He laughs.  “Aye.  Exactly that.”

The corners of her mouth twitch, but she doesn’t smile.  She shuffles forward, her boots nudging against his.  She looks up at him, and the emerald in her eyes darkens, a shadow passing over face.

“We ought to track the bastard down,” Emma says.  “Give him a taste of his own medicine, chop _his_ hand off.”

He sighs, and reaches out, his fingers pressing gently at the hollow of her throat, trailing up to her jaw.  “Swan…”

She huffs.  “I’m serious, Killian.  He thinks you’re dead.  What happens when he finds out that you’re not?”

“Believe me, love.  Vengeance is intoxicating.”  He swallows, hard.  Then, quieter, “To say the least.  I’ve had my fair share of it…” 

He trails off, memories sparking unbidden.  He chokes them down as her fingers trail up his neck, thumbing at the curve of his cheek. 

“But it’s hollow,” he finishes.

Emma shakes her head, leaning forward, her chest pressing against his.  He can feel her heartbeat against his, and he blinks sluggishly as she speaks, “You can’t tell me the world wouldn’t be a better place if he were dead.  If he’d done to me what he did to you, I’d want to run _him_ through.”

“Emma…” 

The expression on her face is so fierce, the set of her jaw so beautifully rigid, he allows himself to imagine it.  What it would be like – what it _would_ have been like – to have her by his side in the heat of vengeance.  Killian drowns in it for a moment, red bleeding into his vision, the sharp crackle of gunpowder and smoke in his nose.

But he’s lived long enough to know that he can’t.  _They_ can’t.  That it isn’t worth it.  He knows he’ll lose himself to it.  Judging by the doubt in the curl of her lips, he knows that _she_ knows this too.

“Emma,” he repeats, reaching out to thumb at her chin.  “Perhaps he’ll return.  Perhaps he won’t.  I fear we’ll spend the rest of our lives chasing him down.  I don’t know about you, love, but I’m tired. 

He sighs, and repeats, “I’m so tired.”

She exhales, heavy through her nose.  She’s certainly never looked her age before, but the color in her eyes dulls from emerald to jade, and he can hear every one of her days in the sound of her voice. 

“I know,” she says.  “So am I.” 

Her eyes fall to his chest, one of her hands reaching for the ring around her neck.  She leans forward, slowly, teetering on the tips of her toes.  He wraps his arms around her, nudges the small of her back with his prosthetic.  “How am I supposed to argue with you when you’re being stupidly reasonable?”

He smiles, wanly.  “Revenge is ancient, Swan.  An _ocean_ of blood could not force time to run backwards.  But we can always start new.  Spit in the face of what lurks behind.  Live in the quiet moments.”

Emma hums, thoughtfully.  “And when he comes back?”

“If – ”

“ _When_.”  Her fingers curl, tight and fierce in the lapels of his jacket.  She grits her teeth, and looks up at him.  “ _When_ he does.”

“At least it won’t be here.  Where your family lives.”

She chews on her bottom lip, uncertainty in her eyes.  She looks over her shoulder, back at the cottage nestled in a dip in the earth.  Back at the farm house atop a little jut of a hill.  The snow picks back up, little flakes falling silently around them, and on them.  He looks down at her, at the twitch in her fingertips, the fall of her hair when she shifts from one foot to the other.  The sun hides behind low, dark clouds, and the wet chill settles into his bones, numbing his hands and his toes.  But he just watches the snowflakes catch in her hair, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathes.  Silence descends, and even though she looks over her shoulder, she falls into him, and he knows she’s saying goodbye to the only home she’s ever known.

Then, slowly, she turns back, leaning up on the tips of her toes to press her chilled forehead against the skin of his cheek.

“Okay,” she whispers.  “I’m freaking out a little bit right now, just so you know.”

Killian laughs, and he can feel her answering chuckle against his ear.

“But okay,” she says.  And he can feel the future falling into place – even as it shatters in the wake of the unknown – in the press of her lips against his.

* * *

Emma resolves to tell David and Mary Margaret that same night, though not before she finds a weak excuse to drag Killian just beyond the tree line, to press him into the nearest beech –

 _He smiles.  “You have a fondness for this sort of tree, eh, Swan?”_  

 _“Would you rather I shove you into that thorny locust over there?”_  

– and to memorize the look of him, the feel of him, the _taste_ of him in the place she’s learned to call home.  The way the snow melts in his hair, scatters it across his forehead.  The touch of pink high on his cheeks as he leans back against trees she’s come to think of as old friends.

Maybe one day it will be over.  Maybe one day, she can bring him back for good, and they can settle and slumber and wile away the hours, the _years_ , lost in one another, with gray in their hair and creases in their skin.  But not today.  Not tomorrow.  Probably not for a handful of years.  And, strangely enough, it feels right.  Not like they’re running away, or even toward something. 

Just running.  Anywhere.  Together.

Mary Margaret seems to understand, though there are tears in her eyes as she clings first to Emma, and then to Killian – who, after several long, tense moments, relaxes into her embrace, his cheek brushing against hers as he leans down.

(Emma wonders briefly how long it will be before he can accept casual touches from anyone besides her…she quickly squashes the thought down.  She’ll have enough to cry about over then next several days.)

David, on the other hand –

“Why can’t you report this guy to police?  _Why_ do you have to go?  I don’t like this.  _Mary Margaret_ , tell them we don’t like this.”

Mary Margaret sighs.  “David…”

“Just a shot in the dark,” Emma says.  “But I’m not sure reporting a thousand-year-old master manipulator…”  She waves her hands, searching for an appropriate descriptor. “… _guy_ to the police is gonna do much good.  He could make them forget, make them see someone else.”

Killian looks grim, though his mouth twitches as he grabs at one of her flailing hands.  “Look, mate, this is as much about starting new as anything else – ”

Emma interrupts, “ – and we’ll be back to visit – ”

“ – before you know it.”

David grumbles as he’s led away, casting pleading looks between the lot of them.  They set to leave the following Sunday, just a week away.  Long enough that she figures David will turn over  both figurative and literal tables trying to find away to keep her, to keep _them_.  But not long enough to succeed.  And by the hunch in his shoulders, Emma can tell that he knows.  That no amount of hemming or pacing or questionable Google searches will put everything to rights.  He spends half of the morning glowering at them from the upstairs window when they’re outside, and from a dark corner of the living room when the sleet forces them indoors. 

By dinnertime, he apparently realizes his mistake, hiding his tears with embarrassingly fake coughs.

By Wednesday, he’s become their shadow.  He joins them at breakfast, and hovers outside while they walk, and claims to need help chopping down a young ash tree.  He stares sadly at their chins whenever they talk, seemingly unable to meet their eyes, and Emma _already_ misses him.

By Saturday, he’s forced them to take ownership of the truck –

“If you tell me you were planning on taking the bus, I’m forbidding you from leaving.”

Killian scratches nervously at the back of his neck and blurts, “Eh…the train?”

Emma rolls her eyes.  “Try plane, but okay.”

– which she’s sure is filled to bursting with hidden money.

When Sunday comes, it’s both too soon and not soon enough.  Emma drags Killian back to bed three different times.  He doesn’t complain – is rather enthusiastic, in fact, judging by the urgent press of his fingers, the rigid bow of his back as he moves under her, over her, beside her.  But she can see the subtle downturn in his lips, the uncertainty in his brow as they gather up what little they ( _she_ , really) owns. 

“This is the right thing to do,” she says, as much her as for him.

“Aye, love,” he says.  “But I don’t want you to regret it.” 

“Regret _you_ , you mean.”

He looks down.

“I’m about to jump town with you,” she says.  “Not that it isn’t _totally_ necessary, but I’ve never…”  She trails off, feeling a bit shy, which is a bit ridiculous, considering she’s not wearing a shirt.  She sighs as she holds his scarred wrist to her chest.  “I’ve never gone anywhere because I wanted to.  I was too desperate to heal, to shut those stupid voices up…”  She swallows, hard.  Then, softer, words nearly lost to the snap of the fireplace, “And…I love you.”

He looks back up, as if he’s surprised.  But how could he be?  She clutches at the ring around her neck as he speaks, leaning forward until he’s whispering into her mouth, “Emma, _God_.”

Suddenly his hand – having been hanging rather dejectedly at his side – is all over her, roaming the curve of her back, his lips against hers as he answers her in kind,

“I love you.” 

Bed for the _fourth_ time now. 

* * *

Several hours later, their haphazard little family stands silent on the edge of the biggest change Emma feels she’s ever made.  She’s moved, loved, lost, wandered both figuratively and literally until her heart could no longer stand it.  But this is different, and while it doesn’t sit quite as heavy on her shoulders, it still sets a lump in her throat and a knot in her stomach.  And surprisingly, _not_ because of the fact that a power obsessed executioner lurks somewhere in the years that lay ahead.  But because of the people the live in the light they’re leaving behind. 

She opens her mouth, means to tell them –

_Thank you._

_I’ll miss you._

_Don’t worry about us._

_I love you._

Instead, she sighs, and she offers the most fearless smile she can manage as she reaches, compulsively, for Killian’s hand.

“So – ”  Killian starts, but his voice catches and he stops, looking at her with such hopeful melancholy, she has to look away.

David rubs at the back of his neck.  “Alright, so…”

Mary Margaret smiles faintly.  “We’ve got something for you, Killian.”

He tilts his head.  “You what?”

They then, rather unceremoniously, walk away, breaking the solemn tension.  Emma turns, watching the confusion twist across Killian’s brow.  She feels a bit lighter as she watches him huff in amusement.  He waits in silence for a long minute before he turns to her, his fingers tightening around hers.

“Am I to be in suspense forever, then, Swan?”

She smiles, faintly, and her voice feels think in her throat when she answers, “Hell if I know.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Emma.”

She rolls her eyes, and leans forward on her toes, appreciating the levity in his tone. 

“First,” she says.  “Take that back.  Second, I’m surprised you don’t already know what it is.  Mary Margaret can’t keep a secret to save her life.”

Killian hums thoughtfully, looking down at her, one eye to the other, down to her lips and back up again.  Reading her.  “And neither can you, I’d wager.  Now why don’t you tell me what it is.”

“Ugh, _no_.  You’ll get it in like two minutes, can’t you wait?”

He pouts.  Just a subtle downturn at the corners of his lips.  This is, apparently, all it takes to do her in.

“Alright, _fine_ , it’s a hook.”

He makes a soft, curious little noise in the back of his throat.  “A hook?”

Emma looks down, suddenly feeling sheepish.  She scuffles her boots against the ground, scratching an imaginary itch into her left elbow. 

“Well,” she says, looking up at him from underneath her lashes.  “You mentioned that you’d had one, you know, _before_ , and how useful it was.”

Killian looks at her for a moment, blankly.  Emma’s quickly making a mess of her elbow, now, as she really digs at it, worried she’s crossed some sort of line.  Before she can apologize, though, he smiles.  It’s tentative, lips pulling back over his teeth, then faltering.  His eyes brighten, shining in the dull afternoon.

“Aye, love…that I did.”  He swallows, and adds, softer, “Thank you.”

Oh God, is she about to cry over a hook?

Turns out, she _is_.  Especially when – once Killian enthusiastically discards his prosthetic in the truck in favor of the hook, allowing Mary Margaret’s fingers to attach the brace to his arm – she and David pull her into a crushing embrace, then Killian as well.  She can feel the chilly metal on the skin of her back as the force of David’s arms around her smush her coat up under her neck.  It feels so Goddamn _right_ , that her unsettled heart quiets in her chest.  As they bid a final farewell, as Killian helps her into the driver’s seat, hook outstretched –

“You’re gonna find any excuse to use that thing, aren’t you?”

“Would be bad form to underappreciate so fine a gift, love.”

– and as they pull away.

Emma reaches up to fiddle with the ring around her neck – feeling, as she does, that she has her hands curled around it more often than not.  Her nerves creep back in as they pull out of the driveway, as the house she’s called home for the past three years disappears from view, along with the only family she’s ever known.  She finds it horribly ironic – all the times she’d considered leaving this place, bag half packed when the sheer… _normalcy_ of routine and friendship and card games on a Saturday night had driven her to panic – now that she’s actually leaving it behind, her first instinct is to dig in her heels.  Her hands grip tight to the steering wheel as her fear mingles with her sorrow

“How sure are we about this?” she says. 

It’s not the first time she’s said it over the past several days.  Usually colored with little more than curiosity, now they hang heavy with something like grief.

Killian turns in his seat and reaches out, his hook on her thigh.  It’s not quite how she imagined it would be, the hook, when David had oh so casually mentioned that he just happened to know a friend of a friend who specialized in that sort of thing.  Less pirate than would perhaps suit him, but he wears it as if he’s had it for years, and even as she flushes with a bit of last minute indecision, she smiles, and reaches down blindly to curl her fingers around it.  It’s cool to the touch, rounded at the tip, a grasping mechanism at the base. 

He hums as she fiddles with it, watching her for a moment before he answers,

“Not even a little bit, Swan.”

She laughs, cackles really, startling herself.  “That’s the _worst_ answer ever.”

She catches his smile out of the corner of her eye.  “Aye, but it’s the truth, stark as it is.  Isn’t that what you needed to hear?”

 _Yes_ , she thinks.  It’s exactly what she needed to hear.  That familiar, smug expression – eyebrows waving, toothless smile – falls over his face, and she shakes her head.

“How do you do that?”

Killian smiles, wider, just as the trees give way to open, rolling fields, and the ache in the pit of her stomach eases.

He answers, simply, “Soulmates.”

* * *

They’re in Illinois before they stop for a rest.  Miles and miles lay behind them, and they peel away along with the lonely years they’ve lived apart.  Long, lingering shadows nip at their heels, but it feels more like they’re chasing the sun –

“Well, we kind of _are_ chasing the sun.”

“It’s a metaphor, love.”

– the light stretching further into evening as they head straight west.  The sheer volume of coffee she’s consumed has set a jitter into her fingers, there’s a cramp in her left thigh, and she longs to see the look on Killian’s face.  They’d sunk into a warm, comfortable silence, and he’d turned his head towards the window, watching the glistening scenery roll by, his hook pressed against her leg.  When the light pours in just so, she can steal a glance of his reflection in the glass.  But she wants to watch the tension ease.  She wants to see if relief has overcome his fear.  She wants to think of the man she met weeks ago, slinking towards her across the slatted wood, the wild spark in his eyes making him seem cornered, wounded.  She wants to think about him as she looks at the man she loves.

“Alright, love?” he asks, when he opens the door for her, wordlessly urging her to take hold of his hook as she steps down.

“ _I’m_ fine,” she says.  “My ass, on the other hand.”

He laughs, and makes a point to slow his stride as he walks behind her so he can take her hand in his.

“Is as lovely as ever,” he says.

She huffs a laugh, but she doesn’t bite back.  Just stares at him.  And he at her.  They look at one another, amongst the gentle ripple of the plains, blanketed with white, stretching on towards the horizon, and glittering in the late afternoon sun.  The hush of winter settles over and between them as they slowly begin to wander out towards the idyllic landscape stretching out beneath their feet.

“You know something?” she says, quieter than she means to, a near whisper.  But he turns to glance at her as she lets go of his hand, reaching up to clutch at the lapel of his jacket.  Snow and ice crunch beneath their feet as they wind among dormant tufts of prairie grass, the winter-grey stalks still despite the breeze, sentries against the wind.

Killian hums, a bit absentmindedly as he reaches out to pluck at the blades with his fingers.  “What’s that, love?”

“I don’t really know how to explain this, but…well, I used to be able to _feel_ people hurting.  Not literally, it was just like I was drawn to it.  And I healed them – because it was the right thing to do, obviously – but also because…because I…. _God_ , I’m terrible at this.”

Killian watches her, stopping them by a rusting, broken chain-link fence that curls at the end of the field.  He leans forward, and she can feel his breath on her face, as he looks her over intently – one eye, the other, back again.

And then, finally, “Because each person you touched, it felt powerful.  Liberating.”

He shuffles forward, his feet nudging between hers.  He leans down, pressing his forehead into hers.  He catches a loop of her jeans with his hook, his hand trailing along her waist before crawling up the skin of her back, fingers gripping at the ridge of her spine.

“Bloody addicting, it was…but never quite enough – ”

“It was you,” she interrupts, speaking, now, against his lips.  “Drawing me in.  It was _you_ – ”

He kisses her.  Even as the words are still hanging on the edge of her tongue, he kisses her, breathing in as he licks at her bottom lip, then out with a groan as she scratches at the back of his neck.

Emma pulls away with a sigh, but she doesn’t go far, burying her face in his shoulder

“Where _are_ we going, anyway?”

Killian laughs, and it rumbles against her chest.  She closes her eyes, allowing her legs to go a bit slack as he hugs her tight to his chest.  “Home, my love.”

Emma smiles.  “I’m already there.”


End file.
